They now speak more often about false news, manipulation and propaganda in the journalistic community in Moldova and less about those who write news and about the quality of professionals. Executive director of the Association of Independent Press Petru Macovei, secretary of the Press Council, stated his opinion about the current situation in the journalistic guild and the existing shortcomings.
Faculties of journalism should lay increased emphasis on deontology
Petru Macovei said in Moldova we equally have very good journalists, who graduated from faculties of journalism, and journalists the quality of whose work is very bad and who are graduates of the same school. The problem resides in the curriculum, which needs to be improved so that is places greater emphasis on quality and deontology than on the theoretical aspects of the profession. The problem resides in the way in which journalists perceive the profession and how they understand their responsibility before the public. Ultimately, this is to be learned also at the faculty and the faculties of journalism should lay increased stress on deontology, professional ethics and responsibility before the public.
“We are all witness to cases that seem unordinary to me, when persons who say they are journalists have a behavior that does not match our job. They provoke the people instead of collecting facts. We now often witness situations when the journalists quarrel with the sources at news conferences, instead of putting questions, while their questions are not questions actually, but heated speeches in favor or disfavor of an idea,” stated Petru Macovei.
Journalist is the one who assumes Deontological Code
The director of the Association of Independent Press considers only those who assume the Journalist’s Deontological Code can be called journalists. Only they can enjoy the rights and protection provided by the law to journalists or anyone possessing a mobile phone will be able to say that they work in journalism. In Moldova, if someone has a permit showing that they work for an x.md site, they consider themselves journalists, but that website may not be a media outlet, but a gossip website, for example, or a platform for denigrating inconvenient persons. “In the recent past, an increasing number of people ask: why should persons who instead of informing, as the professional journalists should do, misinform and publish false information, including by order, enjoy the rights of a journalist? This is not typical of the profession of journalists, who should act in the public interest. That’s why I think the voluntary assumption of deontological responsibilities is mandatory if one wants to benefit from the rights enjoyed by journalists,” said Petru Macovei.
The journalists are protected in the whole democratic world because they are considered truth bearers and persons who collect facts and disseminate information objectively and in a balanced way in the name of the public. In our country, the notion of journalistic balance has worsened a lot in the recent past. There is a lot of biased and persuasive journalism. Regrettably, this bias is increasingly present not only in author or debate programs, but also in the news programs of some of the TV channels.
In journalism, freedom is equal to responsibility
“A real journalist is in the service of the public and should collect facts so as to transmit the information objectively. This is the golden rule of the profession, while those who want to say that the time is different and the rules of modern journalism should be different actually want to manipulate. The public wants correct information, not misinformation, tendentious interpretations and speculations. These are not things for which the public put their trust in journalists. They should discuss more such aspects at school and university,” stated the secretary of the Press Council.
About the intensification of manipulation in the press, Petru Macovei said this is the result of the political and geopolitical context in which the Republic of Moldova is now. It often happens that the contents of reporters who do their job are censored or truncated by editors to present these how the so-called editorial policy requires, but this policy is often aimed at supporting a party or denigrating this party’s opponents. At the same time, any reporter has the right to withdraw the signature from a content that was distorted by editors, but the risk of losing the job makes many of these accept this thing and even self-censure themselves. “If you made once a compromise with your own conscience and with the norms of professional deontology and it seems to you that this was a small and acceptable compromise, the next time you would be asked to make a bigger compromise and at a certain moment you would find yourself swallowed by the manipulation machinery that is ably handled by some of the media owners and their advisers. It happened so to former good journalists who were earlier awarded at different professional contests, but these got lost in time: made a smaller compromise initially and then a bigger one and now found themselves in roles of propagandists and agitators of parties.”
“Regardless of the political situation in Moldova, the values of the profession of journalist cannot be changed. We are either journalists and respect the profession and the public or we go to work for the press services of parties, but should not lie to the people, trying to justify the actions or inaction of a politician. I know it seems banal in our conditions, but the freedom of a journalist does not mean the right to tell anything only for the simple reason that you graduated from a faculty or have a permit. In professional journalism, freedom is equal to responsibility for the stated word,” said Petru Macovei.
Misinformation is professional offense
“There are journalists who work for media trusts because of the higher salaries paid there, arguing they have mortgage to pay on the house or other important problems and thus they accept to provide services to media owners on a temporary basis, as they say. But after the first loan, another loan is taken out and so on… until the real journalists die in them or enter a state of deep hibernation. A person who knows well professional journalism is ‘born” instead of them, but this does not put up resistance because this is what the employer wants,” noted Petru Macovei.
As to the decline in the trust in the media, Petru Macovei considers this thing is justified. In Western Europe, trust in the media is lower than in the Republic of Moldova because the Europeans have a more critical attitude to the broadcast information even if most of the media outlets there are of a higher quality than in our country and this is because there is a critical mass of professionals loyal to the professional journalistic deontology there. Fortunately, there are yet professionals in Moldova too, but things could worsen in the immediate future as the political class spreads more its tentacles towards the media, subduing media outlets and using these as instruments for manipulating the public opinion.
Alina Marin, IPN
