During June 21-30, only four of the 23 election contenders were covered in an exclusively neutral way by the online media. PAS was most often presented in an unfavorable light, in 142 cases. The figure is higher than the number of cases in which the election contender was presented in a neutral way – 131 cases. BeCS appeared in an unfavorable light in 95 cases, while AUR appeared in a positive light in 43 cases, in an unfavorable light in 18 cases and in a neutral light in 97 cases, shows the third monitoring of ten online portals that was carried out by the Association of Independent Press (API) as part of the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections.
In a news conference at IPN, API executive director Petru Macovei said the ten online media outlets published together 883 materials that centered directly or indirectly on electoral subjects. Most of the monitored products were news items – 817. Most of the materials were published by Realitatea.md –132, while the lowest number by Gagauzinfo.md –10. By the addressed subjects, the political area continues to be exploited most often. The electoral process comes second, being raised over three times more seldom. Materials that referred to the foreign relations, the economic situation or the fight against corruption and crime in an electoral context were published more seldom.
Petru Macovei said all the 23 contenders were covered by the published materials. The ten portals in the monitored period had 42 different categories of protagonists. PAS was featured most often, being followed by the Party of Socialists and AUR. “BeCS ranks fourth and, if we add together the data for PSRM and BeCS, we see that the first position is yet taken by the representatives of the Socialists and the Communists, of the bloc that these formed together,” stated the media expert.
As to the sources of information, PSRM was quoted most often - 156 times. It is followed by other media sources with 136 references and by representatives of AUR who were mentioned 99 times. “AUR appears at the top both as a protagonist and as a source. The news articles and other products featured the representatives of this party and they were rather often quoted by the ten monitored portals,” noted Petru Macovei. By the gender of quoted sources, the ratio is 51% men and under 10% women. In the rest of the cases, the gender of the source wasn’t specified.
The ten monitored portals are: Actualitati.md, Agora.md, Gagauzinfo.md, Kp.md, Newsmaker.md, Noi.md, Realitatea.md, Sputnik.md, Timpul.md and Unimedia.info. The media experts analyzed the editorial behavior of these portals, monitoring the whole editorial content, except for advertisements that were marked as such. “In the previous periods and now again, we came across ads that weren’t marketed as advertising and we monitored these as own editorial products of these portals,” stated Petru Macovei.
