Despite the own commitments made by the editorial policy declarations, two channels with national coverage - Prime and Canal 2 – excessively covered the activities of heavyweights of the PDM in their main news programs, distorting thus the media message transmitted to the public and showing political bias, said the executive director of the Electronic Press Association Ion Bunduchi. In a news conference at IPN, he presented the results of a case study centering on the quantitative/qualitative analysis of the content of the main news bulletins of Prime and Canal 2 during May 1-14.
Ion Bunduchi noted that the subjects with the presence of the leader of the PDM in the news programs in the period can be described as electoral propaganda rather than as journalistic products. By impartially covering particular themes, such values as social memory and the family were eroded. In this connection, Ion Bunduchi recommended Prime and Canal 2 to give up disseminating party propaganda and to obey the journalistic norms in covering any theme. Another recommendation is to diversify the broadcast media products and to fulfill the assumed commitments.
Speaking about the ensuring of equity and balance in covering electoral events, Ion Bunduchi said most of the TV channels advantage or disadvantage particular election runners. Only the public TV channel Moldova 1 pledged to obey the law during the electoral period by an editorial policy statement and does it. The other channels only announced that they will obey the legislation, but do not do it.
