The Broadcasting Coordination Council (BCC) temporarily banned four TV channels, which deviated from the Broadcasting Code in the last stage of the election campaign prior to the presidential elections by favoring one candidate, from broadcasting commercials, IPN reports.
Accent TV and NTV Moldova will be unable to broadcast commercials during four days, while Publika TV and Jurnal TV during three days. Prime TV and TV7 were fined the highest amount of 5,400 lei for the same violations.
BCC member Mariana Onceanu-Hadarca said the tendencies identified during the last monitoring remained unchanged. Particular TV channels used techniques to denigrate one of the election runners and even manipulated. There are TV channels that manipulated favoring or disfavoring candidates and penalties proportional to these violations are needed.
“Accent TV and NTV Moldova violated the journalistic norms, disseminated propaganda and misinformed. These channels distinguished themselves by the large number of news items of the kind,” stated Mariana Onceanu-Hadarca.
Council member Dragos Vicol said things worsened and the monitored period included elements that incited hatred based on race, sex and other criteria.
BCC chairman Dinu Ciocan said things at some of the TV channels worsened significantly, namely at Accent TV and NTV Moldova, and supported the punishment of these by banning the distribution of commercials on them. In the case of other TV channels, the deviations repeated and he thus suggested reexamining the monitored reports to see if these denigrated one of the electoral competitors.
