The independent press in the Republic of Moldova faces serious problems owing to two big crisis – the sanitary one and the crisis generated by the war in Ukraine – and also to several crises that negatively influence the situation. The reasons, solutions and possible consequences and risks for society and the state, if rescuing solutions are not ultimately identified, were discussed by the experts invited to IPN’s public debate “Independent press in Moldova: after extensive sanitary crisis and during war”.
Igor Boțan, the standing expert of IPN’s project, said the press is considered independent if it has an independent editorial policy that is not influenced by persons or institutions and if it has the freedom to choose the journalistic objects and objectives. In practice, there are independent, party biased and corporate media outlets. The last two are predetermined to depend on the interests of the founder that promotes them.
“It’s true that the independence and freedom of the press is also regarded and estimated from the Western perspective and this is very important. This approach is based on the division of three powers and, asymmetrically, on the fourth estate that, in the Western culture, has a special role - to be a watchdog, to be critical of the government. This is the standard, but societies like ours, in transition, face a big risk of deviation from it,” explained Igor Boțan.
According to him, the quality of the press in the Republic of Moldova evolved during three profound crisis – the state capture crisis when the press that was independent and fought for the freedom of expression, the captured and controlled press and the press retransmitted from abroad that parasited on advertising in Moldova became more evident; the pandemic crisis that represented an excellent laboratory for testing all kinds of conspiracy theories, for brainwashing, and the crisis related to the war in Ukraine, which revealed propagandistic trends that endanger information security.
Petru Macovei, executive director of the Association of Independent Press, said the notion of “independent press” is considerably dependent on reputation, which is what the people, consumers think and what other influential people in society, the development partners, experts think about a media outlet, if it is independent or not. It is good that there are sufficient media outlets in Moldova that can present things objectively and in a balanced way, as the legislation and deontology provide. Against the small Moldovan market, there is yet independent press that presents the situation in the country in a pluralistic way.
Petru Macovei said the economic aspects of the activity of the independent press are sufficiently regulated. “Since the declaring of Independence, the media market in Moldova has been distorted after parasitic products were allowed to enter the information space and to gain by using foreign brands. Strategies for supporting the national product that needs support weren’t worked out and implemented. The state should think strategically, but the politicians who ruled in time pursued particular goals in the media sector – controlled particular media outlets, using these for manipulation purposes, especially in election campaigns,” stated Petru Macovei, noting that things now stand differently as the law bans parties from owning media outlets, but holdings controlled by current and former politicians still exist.
Mariana Rață, co-founder of TV8 channel, said that when TV8 was launched in 2017, it found itself in a market controlled by two sales houses that reached a cartel agreement. One of them was controlled by the former leader of the Democratic Party Vlad Plahotniuc, while the second by the former leader of the Party of Socialists Igor Dodon. And the two houses agreed to divide the advertising market that is not so big, of only €11-13 million a year, and the independent TV channels were this way excluded. They and other TV channels complained to the Competition Council, but didn’t obtain much.
According to her, the cartel agreement continued even if in a less aggressive way. Things improved only last year. But many companies had to reduce their advertising budgets owing to the pandemic. After the war started this year, a lot of publicity clients withdrew and at the end of February TV8 realized that it didn’t have commercials at all. All the clients withdrew. They preferred to conserve their resources and wait to see what will happen on the market, cutting primarily the advertising budgets.
But it was later determined that the advertising budgets disappeared only from the independent press as the Russian TV channels that retransmit Russian products weren’t at all or only slightly affected. The large, multinational companies that left the Russian market owing to the sanctions imposed against Russia, in Moldova placed 90% of their commercials on Russian TV channels. After the alarm was sounded, a part of the advertising budgets returned, but about 70% of the previous ones avoid the independent press.
Media expert Dumitru Țîra, founder of Realitatea, said there are direct and collateral factors that affect the industry of the press. When it goes to direct factors, these are not related only to the pandemic and the war, which were a catalyst. In 2020-2021, the press became more mobile and reviewed its activities and sources of income. A decline in revenues from publicity wasn’t experienced then, but this year the situation is disastrous. The TV channels will finish this year with minus 40-50% of the total budget of €13 million for the TV advertising market only.
According to Dumitru Țîra, there are a lot of problems, but the biggest problem is the fact that every time they try to repair particular situations related to categories of TV channels, unfair competition, advertising market. “Time has come to build and the formulation of amendments to the legislation on audiovisual will be a start for a qualitative transformation. The war also affected a part of the indirect factors – inflation, economic development,” said the media expert, noting the paradigm and approach should be changed and conditions for growing the advertising market should be created.
Dumitru Țîra noted that the advertising market during the last five years was of about €12 million, while in 2008-2009 it was of €25 million. In other states, the figures for 2008-2009 were exceeded and the decreased budgets were doubled. In Moldova, the level remained low due to artificial factors created by the political class and to incorrect economic activity.
The public debate entitled “Independent press in Moldova: after extensive sanitary crisis and during war” was the 239th installment of IPN’s project “Developing Political Culture through Public Debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
