Teleradio-Moldova challenges results of APEL monitoring

The administration of the National Public Broadcaster “Teleradio-Moldova” says that the first monitoring report presented by the Electronic Press Association (APEL) expresses a negligent attitude that lacks respect for the media institution. The statement was made by the company’s president Valentin Todercan at a meeting of the Supervisory Board of “Teleradio-Moldova” on March 2. “We examined attentively the report covering the period between January 1 and February 3 and identified several key points that we would like to challenge not only for the benefit of the civil society, but also of the EU donors that financed these activities,” Valentin Todercan said. He complained that on the first page of the report, the authors wrote about the television channel “Moldova 1”, but then analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively “a certain M1 channel that was closed 4 years and a half ago,” Todercan said. According to him, the criteria of the analysis of information and the attitude of the journalist are not clear and there is no common principle of quantitatively analyzing the information. “By making a quantitative rather than qualitative analysis of the presence of political figures during news programs, the experts tried to compensate for the lack of qualitative assessments with general meditations and value-based judgments that are not supported by concrete examples,” the president of “Teleradio-Moldova” said. Valentin Todercan also said that the monitoring was carried out mainly by former employees of the public broadcaster, who were once activists of the Communist Party of the USSR and now work as councilors or officers for different parties – details that the European donors do not known. The company’s president proposed that the contestation be presented to the Central Election Commission, the Broadcasting Coordination Council, the Council of Europe and the OSCE Office. But the proposal was rejected by the members of the Supervisory Board. They said that a research cannot be challenged. “The public company and its director have the right to make their viewpoints public through the mass media. No sponsor is responsible for the results of the studies that they financed,” said the Board’s member Viorel Cibotaru. After long debates, the Supervisory Board decided to replace the word ‘contestation” with ‘reply’ and make its content public. The results of the monitoring carried out by APEL showed that the public television, Moldova 1, is biased towards the Communist Party that has governed Moldova since 2001. The report covered the pre-electoral period, January 1 – February 3, and focused on the programs involving political figures broadcast by 9 Chisinau TV channels. The administration of “Teleradio-Moldova” said that it also had objections to the second report presented by APEL on March 2 and would make them public. According to this report, Moldova 1, which is paid from the taxpayers’ money, favors certain election contenders who are usually exponents of the government and disadvantages other runners that are mainly representatives of the Opposition.