Over 40% of the journalistic products published by 12 monitored portals treated subjects related to politics. Approximately 16% of the products centered on the electoral process. The other themes, such as social problems, activity of the local public authorities, the economy, the foreign relations, health or education, were more seldom addressed directly or indirectly in an electoral context by the 12 online media outlets, says the fourth report on the monitoring of the media during the electoral period and the campaign prior to the presidential elections that was produced by the Association of Independent Press (API) within the Coalition for Free and Fair Elections.
“If we refer to the theme, the political issues were most often raised. The subjects related to the electoral process are at a significant distance behind. We should be worried here because, as we can see, the same thing was noticed in the previous periods. The portals prefer to discuss politicians’ statements, reactions to these statements a lot, in detail, in many products and on a large scale and pay less attention to the electoral process, including the activity of the Central Election Commission, the people’s electoral rights. And this is a problem as the portals in such a way actually do not satisfy the public interest. The people on many of these portals cannot learn how they can vote and other details related to the electoral process,” API executive director Petru Macovei stated in a news conference at IPN.
The API director made reference to masked advertisements. According to him, some of the candidates for President do not declare the costs incurred for advertisements in the online media, but many of the monitored portals fully publish the electoral materials. Some of them contain the electoral slogan of candidate Igor Dodon, while others contains calls to vote, which is electoral advertising.
Petru Macovei is sure that many of these materials are paid, but the candidate does not declare these costs. Not many articles are marked as electoral advertising.
Secretary of the Coalition for Free and Fair Elections Elena Prohnitski said the analysis of the financial reports reveals that the PPPN’s candidate Renato Usatyi spent the largest amounts on electronic campaigning. The API’s monitoring reports show that independent candidate Igor Dodon, who is supported by the PSRM, is favored massively. But the financial reports presented to the Central Election Commission show Dodon ranks fourth by the incurred costs. Andrei Năstase (PPPDA) comes second, while Maia Sandu (PAS) takes the third position.
