The state should support the mass media too, as it supports other producers of goods and values of public utility. Namely of public utility, not of commercial, corporate (party) and other interests. The Audiovisual Council and the Competition Council are instruments that can be applied to generate decisions on this segment, Petru Macovei, executive director of the Association of Independent Press (API), stated in a public debate hosted by IPN.
As to TV channels, the expert considers these are too many in number in Moldova and at least one third of them should disappear given the budget of the advertising market. These parasitize on foreign brands as they do not have the journalistic potential needed to create own content in accordance with the law. If the influences are removed and the market works, at least one third of the TV channels should disappear as they do not obey the law and do not have the necessary potential.
According to Petru Macovei, the problems are interconnected and, besides this, we cannot detach too much from the economy. The media’s capacity of resilience, primarily financial one, is in an impasse. “I want to refer in particular to print media. We risk remaining without print media since June. This type of press faces a hyper-problem - the shortage of print paper. This paper first grew more expensive as the production costs rose, while Russia’s war against Ukraine blocked the suppliers of paper to the Republic of Moldova,” said Petru Macovei.
He didn’t agree with his panel mate Mariana Rață’s assertion that the state should not financially support the media so as not to affect their independence. He said it is very important for the Moldovan state to offer support, including financial one, for particular programs. During the pandemic, the countries that respect the press helped teams of journalists. Latvia, for example, offered by €10,000-€20,000 to editorial staffs that asked for support to maintain the quality of the information process.
Petru Macovei also spoke about the Moldovan TV channels’ capacity to be part of the multiplex. “To be accessible all over Moldova, any TV channel should pay €6,000 a month. Almost all the TV channels left the multiplex because they were unable to pay. By the last amendment made to the Audiovisual Code, the state identified a solution to help the TV channels that meet particular criteria, by the subsidies offered to Î.S.Radiocomunicații, to overcome this financial barrier and be able to offer their product of public utility to the public. So, there are methods by which the state can really and effectively support the press that meets the public interest.”
The API director agreed with panel mate Dumitru Țîra’s opinion that the journalistic guild faces a shortage of staff. He said the journalists are trained at only several institutions and not all the graduates enter journalism. Furthermore, no one trains media managers. Things are serious in Chisinau, where the salaries are more or less decent, while in districts the situation is even more serious and many publications are closed.
The public debate entitled “Independent press in Moldova: after extensive sanitary crisis and during war” was the 239th installment of IPN’s project “Developing Political Culture through Public Debates” that is supported by the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
