A part of the ten TV channels monitored during June 18-24 offered relatively equal access to their news bulletins to candidates for MP. Another part privileged particular candidates and ignored others. Two TV channels favored massively the candidates of BeCS, disfavoring the candidates of PAS. Three TV channels favored slightly BeCS, while one channel favored the Shor Party, shows the third report on the monitoring of the mass media in the campaign prior to the snap parliamentary elections that was compiled by the Independent Journalism Center and was presented in a news conference at IPN.
Independent Journalism Center executive director Nadine Gogu said most of the electoral subjects were mainly focused on the candidates for MP, with primarily one source of information being quoted, without the subjects being treated in depth. Most of the analyzed materials were unbalanced from the perspective of gender equality, the men being quoted more often than the women. Also, four in ten of the monitored TV channels correctly and equitably covered the campaign, without favoring or disfavoring a particular election contender. The electoral materials were mostly correct and unbiased, presenting the protagonists neutrally, while the controversial content was balanced.
Nadine Gogu noted that compared with the previous report, some of the TV channels stopped to broadcast news items that favored the Shor Party. “We would like to believe that it is also due to our monitoring reports. We hope that in the next report, we will have a different picture and the TV channels that now favored an election contender will try and adjust their agenda and will select the news articles so as to ensure a balance,” concluded the expert.
The report was produced by the Independent Journalism Center as part of the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections. The Coalition’s secretary Elena Prohnitski said it’s clear that not all the election contenders are sufficiently active during the campaign for the TV channels to cover their activities, but the covering of six contenders of 23 cannot have a reasonable explanation.
Within the monitoring, there were analyzed the full content of the main daily newscasts and materials that referred directly or indirectly to elections. These were assessed for impartiality, objectivity, political bias, pluralism of opinion, correctness and balance of sources. There were also analyzed the used language and videos.
The ten monitored TV channels were Moldova 1, Jurnal TV, Pro TV, TV 8, NTV Moldova, Primul în Moldova, TV 6, Publika TV, Prime TV, and RTR Moldova.
