The third report on the monitoring of the mass media in the campaign prior to the 2015 local elections reveals slight improvements in the coverage of the campaign by the monitored TV channels. Nadine Gogu, executive director of the Independent Journalism Center, told a news conference at IPN that the public TV channel Moldova 1 achieved the best results.
Nadine Gogu stated that Moldova 1 covered the election campaign the previous week in the most active way. Most of the news items it broadcast were impartial. It better ensured the balance of sources and didn’t favor or disadvantage particular contestants.
Another two TV channels monitored, Prime and Canal 2, often broadcast news stories with the same content, but the number of news items about the accomplishments of the Democratic Party’s representatives holding the post of mayor was lower than in the previous periods. These channels tended to present the Democratic candidates only in a positive light. The other election runners were presented in a negative or neutral context. The number of people-sources at the two channels increased, followed by politicians-sources and much more seldom by experts-sources.
TV7 had a relatively positive behavior, but didn’t ensure the necessary balance of sources. It yet ensured better gender equality. It presented mainly the representatives of the Liberal Democratic Party, in a positive light. It didn’t yet favor massively a particular contestant.
The last monitored channel, Accent TV, didn’t ensure the impartiality of its news items and favored the Our Party and the Party of Socialists, presenting the Liberal Party only in a negative context.
Ion Bunduchi, executive director of the Electronic Press Association, analyzed the titles at four of the five TV channels monitored (Moldova 1 does not entitle its materials) and determined that only TV7 didn’t manipulate through titles. Prime and Canal 2 evidently campaigned through the titles, while on Accent TV there were found no erroneous titles.
The last report by the Independent Journalism Center will be made public next week.
