Even if Moldova needs to protect the media landscape from foreign infiltrations that are dangerous for the internal democratic processes, the banning mechanism proposed by the Democrats contains a series of drawbacks, political pundit Dionis Cenusa said in an analysis article for IPN Agency.
First of all, the bans are aimed at the propaganda disseminated through TV channels. Polls show that the share of TV channels as the key source of information during the past 13 years decreased by about 10%. At the same time, the online sources grew by over 25%, helping the Internet to outstrip the radio and to go up second on the list of sources of information preferred by Moldovans, noted the politologist.
According to Dionis Cenusa, the major information war is fought through social networking sites and other online platforms that disseminate news (Youtube), which are not at all covered by the ban imposed on Russian information products. This refers to the Moldovans who visit the Russian website Odnoklassniki at least 1 million times a month as well as Facebook, where the propaganda is not yet banned.
The second weak ring in the anti-Russian propaganda mechanism resides in the real capacity of the Broadcasting Coordination Council to appropriately identify and penalize the institutions that deviate from the new rules.
Another visible shortcoming derives from the inexistence of concrete and narrower criteria that would delimit toxic information from the rest of the media products. Besides invoking “information security”, the authoress should also take into account the concept of “fake news” that the U.S. and the EU want to counteract. Owing to the extended character of the restriction mechanism aimed at the Russian mass media, both the pro-Kremlin channels - Pervyi Kanal, NTV, RenTV – and the independent and opposition channels, such as “TV-Rain”, risk becoming the targets of the anti-propaganda struggle.
The fourth drawback resides in the non-tackled danger of internal propaganda that is used by practically all the political forces, in different quantities and depending on the held political and media monopole.
The media bans imposed by the government cannot affect the private players, such as the political players, which are active consumers and multiplicators of the Russian propaganda, which is promoted subsequently through interventions in the TV, radio and social networking sites, concluded the politologist, referring also to President Igor Dodon.
