“Teleradio-Moldova” denies accusation that it has been biased during election campaign

Valentin Todercan, the president of the National Public Broadcaster “Teleradio-Moldova”, has explanations for the critical monitoring reports presented by European officials and organizations. “Miszei does not watch Moldova 1, but gets informed from Moldovan NGOs,” Todercan said at the last meeting of the Supervisory Board, while commenting on the report compiled by the EU Special Representative for Moldova Kalman Mizsei, which says that “the national public broadcaster does not fulfill its role, but is rather the speaking trumpet of the ruling party,” Info-Prim Neo reports. Referring to the NGOs that criticized “Teleradio-Moldova”, including the Electronic Press Association and the Independent Journalism Center, Valentin Todercan said that “they are amateurs, not experts”. The Supervisory Board secretary Anatol Dubrovschi said that many NGOs in Moldova are politicized. “When somebody establishes a party in Moldova, they also create an NGO,” he said. Speaking about the observations from the report by the Plenary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which says that the national public broadcaster did not make a distinction between the official activity of the high-ranking officials and of their campaigning activities,” the president of “Teleradio-Moldova” said that “they (the PACE – e.n.) did not make a difference between Vladimir Voronin as head of state and Vladimir Voronin as party leader, while the employees of Moldova 1 did this”. “It is impossible not to broadcast the opening of a meat packing company, of a kindergarten or factory. It is not our fault that the ruling party opened them during the election campaign,” Todercan said. Valentin Todercan accused the Opposition of being to blame for a part of the criticism leveled at “Teleradio-Moldova”. “The Opposition is angry with us because it lost the elections,” he said. Referring to the Opposition’s demand that the administration of the company should resign, Todercan said that he is always ready to resign if Urecheanu (Serafim Urecheanu, the AMN leader – e.n.) votes to increase the budget of the public company by 51 million lei. He stressed yet that earlier Urecheanu said that this money should be provided to farmers rather than the public broadcaster. The president of the public broadcaster provided explanations over the accusations that “Teleradio-Moldova” did not make the broadcast of the April 7 violent protests a priority: “At a certain moment, our two reporters on the scene got lost in the crowd and we could reestablish contact with them in the afternoon, when we started to air special programs. Furthermore, we did not want that our cars are overturned by the protesters as it happened to the car of Eu TV, but we also did not have technical conditions to broadcast live,” Todercan said. He also said that the protest organizers instructed the violent protesters to attack the crew of Moldova 1. Ludmila Barbus, a member of the Supervisory Board, said that “we should not broadcast only news about stability in order to create the impression that everything is good in Moldova. We should be more pluralistic because they will not leave us alone.”