Andrei Năstase is the mayoral candidate that got the most coverage in online news sources, according to a monitoring report compiled by the WatchDog.md Community.
Valeriu Pașa, WatchDog.MD program coordinator, told a press conference that 11 websites were monitored. They included the 8 most popular online news sources among Chisinau residents, “plus 3 for diversity”: unimedia.info, jurnal.md, point.md, publika.md, agora.md, mail.ru, moldova.org, protv.md, deschide.md, newsmaker.md and noi.md.
According to the monitoring report, which covered the period September 9-22, Andrei Năstase appeared in 225 news items. The second most covered candiate was Vladimir Cebotari, with 161 stories. Ion Ceban and Octavian Țîcu shared the third place with 90 appearances each.
Overall, all candidates were reported on in favorable rather than negative terms.
The website with the most stories covering candidates was point.md, followed by Unimedia and Agora. However, mail.ru, moldova.org and newsmaker.md were the top three for neutral news.
The report found that point.md, deschide.md and jurnal.md were the most biased, with the first clearly favoring Ion Ceban, the second disfavoring Andrei Năstase, and the third clearly favoring Năstase.
Another finding is that online news overall appear far more balanced than TV newscasts.
