The main amendments to the Code of Audiovisual Media Service enable to bring back the Audiovisual Council (AC) and Teleradio-Moldova under the Parliament’s scrutiny and to punish the Council, including by dismissing all its members, if its activity is found to be ‘noncompliant and insufficient’. The amendment proposal was discussed in public consultations staged by the Parliament’s commission on culture, education, youth, sport and the media, IPN reports.
PAS MP Virgiliu Pâslariuc explained the essence of the proposed changes. Referring to the Audiovisual Council’s duties, he said the lawmakers offered a lot of stimuli to the regulator, but didn’t stipulate a punishment mechanism. “We are trying now to balance things and will forge the activity of this institution, but we want to increase the responsibility of the AC members by these amendments,” he stated.
Another amendment proposed by PAS refers to the restoration of parliamentary control over the public broadcaster Teleradio Moldova. “The examination of legality is one of the Parliament’s key duties. We are obliged by law to determine if the law works […] The situation of 2018-2019, when the public broadcaster was under the AC’s oversight, actually showed that this didn’t work. The AC is a referee that should regulate, not administer. The administration work was too hard for the AC and it anyway couldn’t avoid suspicions of involvement, of political interference in the broadcaster’s work.”
Cristina Durnea, of the Independent Journalism Center, said the procedures should be very clearly regulated, including the dismissal procedure, if they insist on the institution of parliamentary control. The reasons for dismissal leave room for arbitrariness on the part of the authority that applies these reasons. The phrase “defective activity” is not defined by law and the relevant norm can be interpreted by the bodies that apply it.
The lack of a clear difference between cases when the AC members can be dismissed altogether and individually is another problematic aspect. “A badly-intentioned parliamentary majority can reject and dismiss, can change the composition of the Supervisory Board or the AC, regardless of the content of the report, in the absence of criteria that would justify the rejection,” stated Cristina Durnea.
“The law is good, but the problem is that those who are named to the two bodies obey not the law, but the instructions received from the party,” said Petru Macovei, of the Association of Independent Press, noting the bill in the long run can generate particular problems that should be avoided. “The big challenge for you, as the ruling party, will be to try and make another kind of selection than until now. If you name obedient persons, you will demolish any confidence in the possibility of reforming the audiovisual sector.”
WhatchDog expert Valeriu Pașa said the problem does not reside in the quality of the law, but in the way in which this is implemented. “I do not see why the public broadcaster should be under the Parliament’s oversight, primarily with this very operative instrument – to modify the composition of the administration board once a year,” he said, noting the current members of the AC should be fully removed as it is a shame to have such an institution as the current one. “When the Council includes decent people, these will cope with the monitoring of the public broadcaster as well.”
