News from one source

This case study has been produced on the basis of a news article published by ziarulnational.md and republished by voceabasarabiei.net.
Title 1: “Local elections might be POSTPONED until after 25 October. Filat: We lose USD 110 MILLION annually”
Author: ziarulnational.md (http://ziarulnational.md/alegerile-locale-ar-putea-fi-amanate-si-dupa-25-octombrie-filat-suportam-pierderi-de-110-milioane-de-dolari-anual/)

Title 2: “Filat: We lose USD 110 MILLION annually”
Author: voceabasarabiei.net (http://voceabasarabiei.net/site/article/1650)
The article contains the explanation formulated on 6 March 2015 at the Good evening talk show on public television by Vlad Filat, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova (PLDM), referring to the media speculations about the authorities’ intention to postpone the local elections. According to the law, these elections should take place between 5 July and 25 October, but authorities have already repeatedly suggested that they would prefer to postpone them.
 
The news presented by the two media outlets is a clear sample of manipulation, because it has been produced on the basis of one source, whose direct interest in the postponement may be easily understood.
The article quotes three declarations of Vlad Filat that contain the entire arsenal of arguments that his party uses when it justifies the need of postponement. In the first explanation, the liberal democratic leader says that an administrative-territorial reform is necessary, because the current form of administrative organization is inefficient and produces huge annual losses, which he estimates at 2% of the GDP. “A simple calculation shows that it is USD 110 million per year,” he says, and then compares this amount with the entire aid that is received from external partners in a year.

These arguments, not confirmed by a different source, were clearly presented at the above-mentioned talk show. If these two outlets’ journalists found it necessary to continue the topic, they absolutely had to balance the news by searching for and inserting into their materials the opinions of other actors affected by the intended postponement, such as the Liberal Party (PL). In addition to the fact that in this news item Vlad Filat suggests that the PL vote would be absolutely necessary to postpone the elections, a representative of this party is the mayor of the capital city, so balanced information would require a comment by a representative of this party. Also, if authors intended to produce balanced and correct information, the comments of someone from the local authorities and of a law expert would be essential.

Vlad Filat is the leader of one of the two governing parties that might reasonably be suspected of having a direct interest in the postponement of the local elections. One might assume that the PLDM, the PDM (Democratic Party of Moldova), and the PCRM (Party of Communists) feel threatened by the very close local elections, in a context totally unfavorable for them, marked by immense disillusions among the electorate, provoked by the socio-economic problems that are particularly caused by the depreciation of the Moldovan leu. The danger of a painful loss in the local elections is a fact generally recognized by experts, so the postponement would definitely be a salvation for these parties.

The two media outlets that published the news did not even try to take into consideration these arguments that reasonably exist in the public space. Nor did they try to question the truth of the financial arguments invoked by this party leader to justify the postponement that he is pleading for. The only thing these two outlets did was that they provided a platform for a political party to promote its opinions and visions. The presence of such news in the information flow of these media outlets might lead to the conclusion that they do political partisanship for the PLDM.