Teleradio-Moldova was more impartial in recent election campaign

The national public broadcaster Teleradio-Moldova (TRM) has made progress in improving its public character, shows a monitoring report on the covering of the election campaign produced by the Electronic Press Association (APEL) within the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections, Info-Prim Neo reports. The report says that Teleradio-Moldova had an impartial and unbiased behavior in the recent election campaign, not as in 2009, when it showed political bias. APEL executive director Ion Bunduchi said that in the monitoring period TRM ensured political plurality in its news and electoral programs, observing the legal and deontological norms. The monitors followed how often and for how long the election runners were present in the news items and electoral debates, as well as the electoral advertisement. Mass media expert Vlad Turcanu said that 360 news stories have been monitored on Radio-Moldova. Each sixth of them had a conflictual character. Practically each third news item with conflictual character was based on only one source of information. Vlad Filat, Mihai Ghimpu and Dorin Chirtoaca appeared most often on the public radio and television stations. The ten most featured political parties include all the parliamentary parties and the European Action Movement. The news items focused mainly on the PCRM, the PLDM and PL. As to electoral advertisements on Radio Moldova, Vlad Turcanu said the main parliamentary parties used all the airtime allotted to them free of charge and for payment. Among the independent candidates, Victor Stepaniuc, Valeriu Plesca and Evghenii Nazarenco had the largest number of ads on Radio-Moldova. “Some of the election contenders did not use at least the free airtime given to them on Radio-Moldova,” said the APEL expert. Moldova 1 in the period broadcast 504 news stories, 60 of which with conflictual character. Some of the news items were based on one source. The secretary of the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections Nicolae Panfil said the Democrat election runners have not been favored. But the persons holding senior state posts were featured most often as they did not leave their positions for the period of the election campaign. “We consider Moldova 1 ensured plurality of opinions. But on November 27, it broadcast the Gala of the TVR1 Prizes that was attended by two election contenders - Mihai Ghimpu and Vlad Filat, even if the Broadcasting Coordination Council recommended avoiding presenting the election runners on November 27,” said Vlad Turcanu. According to the report, Teleradio-Moldova provided equal access to its programs for all the parties and independents running in elections. In the period it carried out a wide voter education campaign. The monitoring report was compiled with the support of Soros-Moldova Foundation.