The mass media in Moldova weren’t impartial in the election campaign, while the candidates for the presidency were favored or shown disfavor depending on the political orientation of the media outlet owner. Such conclusions were formulated in a roundtable meeting entitled “Mass media in the presidential elections 2016: information and manipulation”. The event was organized by the Association of Independent Press, the Independent Journalism Center and the Press Council, IPN reports.

Independent Journalism Center executive director Nadine Gogu said seven TV channels - Publika TV, Prime, Canal 3, Canal 2, NTV Moldova, Accent TV and Jurnal TV - favored excessively an election runner and disadvantaged the others. “These TV channels deviated from the provisions of the legislation in the election campaign,” she stated.

Petru Macovei, executive director of the Association of Independent Press, said the monitoring showed that the print media abused opinion reports about the candidates for President to the detriment of unbiased news articles.

Media expert Ion Bunduchi said the mass media didn’t honestly fulfill their role to inform in the election campaign, while the voters didn’t have access to correct information.

Following a monitoring report, the Broadcasting Coordination Council on November 25 decided to penalize a number of broadcasters that biasedly covered the election campaign. In particular, Publika TV, Accent TV, NTV Moldova and Jurnal TV were banned from broadcasting advertisements during a three-day period; Prime and Ren Moldova were fined the highest amount possible (5,400 lei), while TV7 was fined the lowest amount.