After examining the complaint of Oleg Crudu, director of the Municipal Clinical Hospital “Saint Trinity”, against the portal realitatea.md, the Press Council held that the journalistic deontological norms were violated in the article entitled “Letter that astounds: “People die not of COVID, but because of rotten health system. Story of a family form Chisinau”. The Council reminded that the media outlets are obliged to verify the information before publishing it and to ask for the opinion of the relevant sides featured in an article, IPN reports.
Oleg Crudu said the article’s title, by which the whole health system is appraised based on unverified assertions, is insulting to doctors and is untruthful. Also, the published letter represents only the opinion of a third party about the party that is featured in the article and this opinion is presented as a fact, even if it wasn’t verified.
On the same subject, Rodica Gramma, who cosigned the complaint and who is Moldova’s representative at the Committee on Bioethics of the Council of Europe, said the article questions the quality of the medical act at a health facility, but the journalists didn’t make effort to verify the facts before publishing the article. The fat that the editorial staff, after publishing the article, asked to discuss directly with the involved doctors so that these provide explanations to them is an abuse of the journalists’ social status.
“The portal published an article with suspicions of persons without medical studies about diagnosis and medical decisions, where the doctors are directly accused of incompetence and are called “liars” and “nonhumans”. This is an opinion for which realitatea.md assumed responsibility by making it public and should be penalized,” says the complaint to the Press Council.
The founder of realitatea.md Dumitru Țîra replied that the editorial staff asked for the opinion of the hospital’s administration, but this made reference to a Facebook post of Rodica Gramma, which they consider somehow instigating. The article was published because the journalists determined that the Ministry of Health now does not have a protocol for emergencies involving persons suspected of having COVID-19.
Editor-in-chief Elena Putregai said the editorial staff didn’t intend to infringe on the professional independence of doctors when they wanted to discuss directly with them. They just wanted to learn their opinion about the facts described in the letter, while the assertions from the letter cannot be checked without having access to the Ministry’s protocols on COVID-19.
Press Council president Viorica Zaharia said realitatea.md published a letter without questioning the collected information and without presenting the opinions of all the involved sides. The news article was based on one source and the hospital’s reaction was asked two hours after the publication of the accusing article. The Press Council recommended that the media outlet should take these findings and recommendations into account when writing other articles.
