The mass media in Moldova needs a set of recommendations about the use of data from social networking websites and their exclusion from journalistic investigations. The suggestion was made by the chairman of the Press Council Ludmila Andronic, IPN reports.
“We should institute a model of request or permission for using the personal data of persons registered on social networking sites,” Ludmila Andronic said in a roundtable meeting centering on the ethical challenges of the media outlets.
Maida Bahto, a member of the Press Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina who was invited to the event, said that the visitors leave many defamatory comments on the media websites in her country, but the people have the possibility of filing a complaint to the journalistic self-regulatory body that, for its part, requests the editor to remove the comments. They also cooperate with the police and the prosecution service in identifying the author. The users last year filed 200 complaints to the journalistic self-regulatory body of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Estonian ombudsman Tarmu Tammerk said that in order to prevent comments that instigate hatred and include discriminatory elements, the most popular news portals of Estonia adopted regulations that enable the persons to leave comments online only using a pseudonym obtained after registering by using the name and surname.
Invitee from Bulgaria Asen Velichkov, program manager at the Center for Media Development of Sofia, said that the Bulgarian journalists not always act according to the Ethical Code too. “The six cases of self-immolation that happened last year were reported on the first page of the newspapers, becoming an element of sensation,” said Asen Velichkov, adding that Bulgaria lacks a functional self-regulatory mechanism in the mass media.
The roundtable meeting forms part of the program of the fact-finding visit of the project “Responsibilities of the mass media: practices of journalistic self-regulation” that is implemented by the Association of Independent Press in the name of the Press Council of Moldova, with financial support from the East East Beyond Borders Program of Soros Foundation Moldova.
