43,5% of the population considers mass media faces cenzorship

Mass media from the Republic of Moldova is not free to present news and comments, being censored by the government, consider 43,5% of the respondents that participated at the poll The Public Opinion Barometer. Other 41% consider the press is not free to criticize openly the government. Only 34% of interrogated persons think that in the Republic of Moldova is no censorship and 37% consider that in Moldova mass media has the possibility to criticize openly the government. The most important information source for 76,4% of the respondents is the television, but only 55% of them trust this information source. On the second place the questioned persons named the radio as the most important information source for 11,5%, but 14% trust it. Only 4,1% chose the newspapers. Nearly a half of the respondents consider the Company Teleradio-Moldova presents the information correctly, partially or entirely while other 30% consider the interests of the government influence the presented information. Over 84% of the respondents watch every day the TV and almost 60% listen to the radio. 12% daily read newspapers and almost 10% read books. In the last 3 moths over 40% of the questioned persons declared they have never read books, and over 22% - newspapers. The opinion poll was performed in the period March 25 - April 8 2006 and involved 1506 persons from 99 localities excepting the Transnistrian region. The survey was organized by the CIVIS Centre and was administrated by the Public Politics Institute with the support of Soros Foundation – Moldova.