During the electoral period and the campaign prior to the presidential elections of 2020, PAS candidate Maia Sandu was most often placed in a negative context in the contents published by 12 monitored online portals. Independent candidate Igor Dodon, who was backed by the PSRM, was most often presented in a positive context. Eight of the 12 monitored portals favored him, says the final monitoring report presented by the Association of Independent Press (API), IPN reports.
API expert Aneta Gonța said the monitored media outlets together published 8,179 articles that referred to the campaign prior to the presidential elections directly or indirectly. Over 95% of the journalistic products were news. Slightly over 4% of the articles were published in the form of comments, editorials or other types of opinion articles, while the interviews with a candidate, the Vox Populi polls and the electoral debates represented 1%.
The 12 media outlets paid attention mostly to the political sphere in an electoral context, publishing 3,633 articles on the issue. The articles about the electoral process in general were twice lower in number. Other thematic areas in an electoral context were covered not so often. The problems in education, for example, were covered almost 25 times more seldom than the political sphere.
The eight candidates who ran in elections and the candidates rejected by the CEC appeared as protagonists and sources of electoral content. In general, Igor Dodon appeared most often as a protagonist of media products of an electoral character. Maia Sandu comes at a distance of over 1,000 appearances. The candidate of the PLDM Tudor Deliu appeared as a protagonist and as a source most seldom. For example, Igor Dodon was quoted 53 times more often than Tudor Deliu.
A quantitative analysis of the contexts in which the candidates who competed in the presidential runoff appeared shows that Igor Dodon was favored massively, being primarily presented in a positive context during September 15-30. Maia Sandu appeared in a negative context most often, principally before the runoff vote.
The monitoring was carried out during September 15 – November 14, 2020 as part of a project that is implemented by the Association of Independent Press and is financed by the National Endowment for Democracy of the U.S.
