Representatives of media nongovernmental organizations want a new variant of the Press Law, a new Broadcasting Code and amendments to the law on public procurement and the Election Code. They had a meeting with members of the Parliament’s commission on culture, education, research, youth, sport and mass media on May 3, in connection with the World Press Freedom Day, IPN reports.

The commission’s chairman Chiril Lucinschi said the Parliament’s agenda includes a number of legislative changes that concern the work of journalists, but the quality of the press should also not be neglected. The journalists must delimit between the public and the private interests and there should be created a self-regulatory body of the media.

According to the MP, the state holds monopoly on the broadcast frequencies and licenses and this leads to the favoring of certain media outlets and the concentration of advertisements in their hands. The politician believes that the state monopoly in this field will disappear when new broadcasting technology is implemented all over the country.

Liliana Vitu-Esanu, strategic development director at the Independent Journalism Center, and Petru Macovei, executive director of the Association of Independent Press, said the Press Law should be modified if not replaced. They asked that when the politicians believe that they were we slandered, they should go the Press Council to complain, not to threaten the journalists.

In order to create a precedent, after punishment was included in the Penal Code for the authorities that try to censure the journalists, the civil society representatives said they will sue the next politician or civil servant who will threaten the journalists.

The commission’s deputy chairwoman Corina Fusu said that she personally will submit a new version of the Broadcasting Code to Parliament for approval. She aims to find out the practices of other states on the protection of investigative journalists and to propose them for application in Moldova.