Teleradio asks critical NGOs for explanations

The national broadcaster Teleradio-Moldova (TRM) is seeking explanations from a number of nongovernmental organizations which have drafted a declaration recently to warn that the national broadcaster is endangered by censorship and political control, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to TRM, the statement of the 11 NGOs deserves attention only to the extent to which they generate questions which Teleradio-Moldova has repeatedly asked. In a letter released on Wednesday, the TRM leadership is challenging the capacity of the 11 NGOs to speak for the entire society. “In the spirit of the democratic values you should make such a mandate, which you have abusively attributed to yourselves, publicly known”, the letter reads. The TRM insists on seeing the list of those who monitored the activity of the public broadcaster during the election campaign and whose opinions led to criticism of Teleradio. “There's not a single specialist in the area of broadcasting among them, except for APEL, but they, too, are former members of our company's leadership or owners of various public and private media institutions, and therefore their opinions cannot be considered unbiased, as there is room for conflicts of interest”, it was said. The recommendation for the TRM to organize public debates with electoral competitors is regarded by the leadership of the broadcaster as a “means to persuade the foreign donors to continue providing plentiful financing to the NGOs, which represent only narrow groups of persons, financially interested in winning monitoring projects”. The joint declaration stating that the public broadcaster is in danger because of censorship and political control has been launched recently by the Electronic Press Association (APEL), the Independent Journalism Center, the Independent Press Association, IDIS Viitorul, the Investigative Journalism Center, the Acces-Info Center, the League for the Defense of Human Rights, the Coalition for Free and Fair Elections 2009, the Journalists Union of Moldova, the Promo-LEX Association and Business Consulting Institute. The declaration demanded that Teleradio-Moldova “should forsake its practice of interfering and exerting control on journalistic activity, infringements contradicting both domestic and European legal standards”.