Five election contenders were presented by ten media portals monitored by the Association of Independent Press (API) exclusively in a neutral way. These are the Party “NOI”, the Working People’s Party, the Ecologist Green Party, the Professionals Movement “Speranta-Nadejda” and the Party of Regions. The Party of Action and Solitary was most often presented in a negative context. The Electoral Bloc of the Communists (EBCS) and the Socialists was presented mainly in a neutral context and also in disfavoring and favoring contexts. The Alliance for the Union of Romanians was presented primarily in a favoring context. The other contenders were presented in a favorable or an unfavorable context, says report No. 2 on the monitoring of the editorial behavior of the online media during the campaign prior to the snap parliamentary elections of 2021 (monitoring period: June 11-20, 2021), IPN reports.
In a news conference at IPN, API executive director Petru Macovei said that on the one hand, there are media outlets that take their information mission seriously. These are Agora.md and Newsmaker.md, who had a balanced editorial behavior in relation to all the election contenders. Agora.md was the most unbiased portal among the monitored ones. Three of ten publications - Actualităţi.md, Kp.md and Noi.md openly - directly and massively promoted the EBCS, disfavoring with the same intensity the PAS and Maia Sandu. Actualităţi.md and Kp.md in the period had a similar behavior. They both presented the PAS in a disfavoring context in the case of accusations and insinuations, but the reply of those concerned was absent.
Găgăuzinfo.md, Sputnik.md and Unimedia.info, even if more discreetly, more often presented the EBCS in a favoring context and the PAS in a disfavoring context. Unimedia.info presented the PPPDA, PACE and PDM in a favoring context. A part of the context represented electoral advertising, but formed part of the general newscast. This creates confusion among readers. Timpul.md massively promoted the electoral agenda of the AUR, disfavoring and discrediting primarily the PAS and the EBCS. According to Petru Macovei, this portal continued to have the most tendentious editorial policy. It presented the electoral events and contenders selectively and with a nonbiased attitude. Realitatea.md in general covered the events impartially, but favored the PAS and disfavored primarily the EBCS and the PPPDA, mainly in videos. Several of the texts contained advertising, but weren’t marked as such.
In total, the ten monitored portals published 841 materials that directly or indirectly referred to the election campaign. As in the previous periods, most of these were news items – 798. Most often, the media are the sources of journalistic content. This means the portals collect information about particular subjects with own forces less and rather quoted other media sources. Of the 1,181 sources, almost 47.76% were men, 13.52% were women, while in 38.72% of the cases, the gender of the source was not specified in journalistic content.
The API formulated a number of recommendations that, together with the report, will be sent to the concerned media outlets. The report was produced in the framework of a project financed by the National Endowment for Democracy of the U.S.
