The favoring and disfavoring of candidates in the presidential elections became more accentuated at some of the broadcasters, shows the last monitoring report produced by the Broadcasting Coordination Council. This covered the period between October 10 and 19. Thus, seven TV channels were fined the highest amount 5,400 lei, a TV channel was warned publicly, while three broadcasters were only warned, IPN reports.
The report shows the TV channels with national coverage Prime TV, Canal 3, Canal 2 and Publika TV continued to massively favor the Democratic Party’s candidate Marian Lupu and to disfavor the candidate of the PPPDA Andrei Nastase. Jurnal TV favored massively the PPPDA’s candidate and disfavored the PDM’s candidate. It should be noted that the monitoring covered the period before Nastase and Lupu withdrew from the presidential race.
During October 10-19, Accent TV and NTV Moldova presented the Socialist candidate Igor Dodon mainly in a favorable light compared with the other election runners.
All these broadcasters were fined the highest amount.
N4 was warned publicly for covering insufficiently the election campaign. Realitatea TV, Pro TV and Ren Moldova were warned over the slight imbalance in covering the election campaign. The public TV channel Moldova 1 covered the electoral activities of the candidates for President rather impartially.
“The situation is worse compared with the first report both in terms of the imbalance in the volume of airtime and of the connotation of the materials. Even the broadcasters that we gave as an example as regards the covering of the election campaign now didn’t ensure a proper balance,” said the Councils chairman Dinu Ciocan.
Council member Olga Gututui said the broadcasters were obliged to offer airtime to all the candidates, but only Moldova 1 did this. “I will request the broadcasters to provide information about whom and when they allotted airtime,” she stated.
Member Mariana Onceanu-Hadarca said the report shows the citizens of Moldova are used as voting machines. She stated that Prime TV, Canal 3, Canal 2 and Publika TV continue to defy all the broadcasting norms, noting a democratic society is not possible with antidemocratic covering.
The Council members expressed their regret at the fact that the broadcasting legislation wasn’t amended so that the punishment matched now the gravity of the committed violations.
