On July 24, 2015, a group of people led by Grigore Petrenco, the chairman of Our Home Moldova Party, protested on Bulgara Street in Chisinau next to an apartment building that is home to Vlad Plahotniuc, the deputy chairman of the Democratic Party (MP at the moment). Protesters were asking for an annulment of the decision to increase the tariff for electricity by 37% because they considered that this increase was for the benefit of intermediary companies allegedly controlled by Mr. Plahotniuc.
The majority of television stations produced news stories about the demonstration in which they announced that a group of protesters decided to camp overnight in tents next to Vlad Plahotniuc’s home. News stories on this topic appeared in the following days also because the protesters camped for a week. |
Presentation of the topic
Several media outlets wrote about the arrests of owners of the Caravita Company in the context of the fraud at Banca de Economii (BEM). Anticorruption prosecutors presented evidence to the press gathered as the result of searching the company’s offices and owners’ homes. According to the prosecutors, both Caravita and Business Estate Investment companies took loans from BEM that they then transferred into banks in Latvia. They presented the scheme of how BEM offered loans that became nonperforming. At first glance it seemed to be quite comprehensive news showing exactly and in detail who was guilty of the fraud at BEM, but the facts ended there. |
On August 10, 2015, the majority of television stations and news portals published information based entirely on the statement of Mihai Moldovanu, head of the Health Department of Chisinau Municipality. After a meeting at the Chisinau Mayor’s Office, he announced that two heads of department at the Holy Trinity Hospital had been dismissed and that a reprimand was imposed on a third hospital employee for negligence during the operations on July 16 on 10 patients who suffered complications after eye surgery. |
This case study is based on online news stories whose authors, contrary to professional norms, use judgmental language, thus developing a certain attitude on what they write about. According to the golden rule, reporters should not express judgments in news stories. Some reporters, however, ignore this rule. Here are some examples. |
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Presentation of the topic
The protest on October 4, 2015 was the center of attention of Moldovan mass media. The majority of television stations gave a lot of airtime to the event. Journalists presented details about the brief siege of the Parliament and the Global Business Center buildings and about the protesters’ clashes with the police. The event was also the topic of analysis programs on the majority of TV channels.
Facts
The television stations analyzed in this case study covered the topic in different ways: Some focused on chronological criteria while others focused only on some aspects of the event. |
The Moldovan Journalist Code of Ethics requires the reporter to “respect people’s privacy and ask for permission to record photo/video, except if they are in a public place.” There are cases, however, when reporters seem to forget about the need to respect privacy, providing in their stories details and images that, in fact, are not information of public interest, but are inserted in order to attract as many readers as possible.
Hereinafter, we will present several such examples:
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A recent media event at the Chisinau International Airport, apparently intended to prove that the Russian company that obtained, a year ago, a half a century concession on the only international airport in Moldova is decided to fulfill its investment commitments, involuntarily turned into a test of resistance for Moldovan media outlets, which are more and more often believed to be divided among the governing political forces that have some political control over the media content. This case study will show how, in the attitude to this topic (ignoring it or covering it in an unbalanced manner, while omitting some elements indispensable for correct information), media outlets proved their lack of editorial independence and dependence from the owners that the legislation has been unable to pull out of shadow for quite a long time.
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In the race for views, more and more media outlets use sensational headlines, which have nothing in common with the news themselves. These headlines often contain such adjectives as “sensational”, “impressive”, “amazing”, or “alarming”. In the absence of such adjectives, headlines contain a harsh statement, which has nothing in common with the information in the article, either. A media outlet may happen to actually obtain some sensational information, but when it happens on a daily basis, it becomes discomforting for readers. |
According to the latest Barometer of Public Opinion (BPO) in Moldova, presented in April 2014, the Internet is second in the rating of sources of information after television. The virtual space is daily accessed by 42% of respondents, which is 4% more than according to the BPO in November 2013. It shows that the Internet has been gaining ground over traditional mass media in Moldova. For 20% of respondents the Internet is the most important source of information. For this reason, materials posted online are subject to the same rules of journalism, ethics and deontology.
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The accuracy of a piece of information often depends not only on the balance of sources, objectivity and impartiality. Omission, deliberate or out of ignorance, and failure to substantiate or provide the context that is absolutely necessary to understand some information, process or fact can sometimes damage the accuracy of a journalistic product more than any other mistake. This case study will show how, in the absence of the context, a news item or an article can lead to manipulation of public opinion or even to promotion of a person or group that are actually expecting that. |
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