Press covered election campaign from viewpoint of runners they sympathize, final report

The print media covered the election campaign from the perspective of the election contenders that they sympathize and on which the editors and owners depend, without ensuring a plurality of opinions and giving the right to reply, in accordance with the deontological code. The finding is contained in the final report on the covering of the election campaign by the mass media produced by the Independent Journalism Center within the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections, Info-Prim Neo reports. Mass media expert Petru Macovei told a news conference on Tuesday that the monitored papers preferred the opinion articles and focused less on news stories. The electoral advertisements occupied too much space in newspapers. The 12 monitored newspapers devoted 240 pages to such ads. According to Petru Macovei, the tendency to support and favor some of the runners in group witnessed in the previous campaigns persisted. The news agency Omega and the papers Moldova Suverana and Nezavisimaya Moldova had a biased editorial attitude, favoring the PCRM and discrediting the political opponents of the Communists. At the same time, the newspapers Timpul de dimineata and Jurnal de Chisinau criticized the PCRM or presented it mainly in an unfavorable light, while the PLDM and PL were presented in a favorable light in opinion articles. Jurnal de Chisinau was also critical of the PDM. The news portal www.unimedia.md and the papers Evenimentul Zilei and Panorama also criticized the Communists and favored the Liberal-Democratic parties, including the Humanist Party of Moldova (Panorama). The papers Vesti Gagauzii and Golos Balti contained a few news stories. This shows that they do not appropriately fulfill their duties of media outlets. The newspaper Komsomoliskaia Pravda preferred the articles and advertising materials of the election runners, favoring the PLDM and PCRM. According to the report, the state-owned news agency Moldpres favored the leaders of the PLDM and PL, while the agency Infotag was rather neutral. The report was produced within the “Monitoring of the mass media in the election campaign” project with funding from the British Embassy in Moldova, the Council of Europe and East Europe Foundation, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, the National Endowment for Democracy and the United States Agency for International Development through Eurasia Foundation. The compilation of the report was also possible owing to the support provided by the U.S. through the United States Agency for International Development as part of the Academy for Educational Development's Moldova Civil Society Strengthening Program.