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The decision was taken after studying the report of monitoring the newscasts of the main television stations, namely Moldova 1, Prime, Canal 3, Canal 2, Publika TV, TV 7, Accent TV, PRO TV Chisinau, Jurnal TV, N4, Realitatea TV, Ren Moldova and RTR Moldova.
The monitoring showed that Prime TV, Canal 3, Canal 2 and Publika TV covered elections in a biased manner, clearly favoring Monica Babuc, the election runner representing the Democrat Party. Publika TV was the most biased of all. According to the report of the Broadcasting Coordinating Council, the share of Ms. Babuc's appearances on the screen was about 70% if compared with her competitors, and most news shed a favorable light on her.
TV 7, in its turn, favored most the candidate of the Liberal Democrat Party, Serafim Urechean. Accent TV reported most about Dorin Chirtoaca, the candidated of the Liberal Party, and most coverage was negative.
According to Iurie Colesnic, member of the Broadcasting Coordinating Council, the monitoring results should be considered not from the viewpoint of its weight in total coverage, but rather from the viewpoint of the duration of coverage per candidate. He believes that in this way the overall picture would have been more balanced and it would have shown that there is no large discrepancy between the coverage of different competitors. However, other members of the Broadcasting Coordinating Council contradicted him, arguing that it is more important to see whether the candidates were presented in a positive, negative or neutral light.
Olga Gututui, member of the Broadcasting Coordinating Council, proposed that Publika TV, Canal 2, Canal 3 and Prime be monitored to see whether they comply with the legal framework on disguised publicity. She also mentioned the results of the monitoring of the media during the election campaign by media NGOs, which have drawn attention to this fact.
Nicolae Damaschin, member of the Coordinating Council for Broadcasting, mentioned the threat of “domestic propaganda” via local TV stations. He believes that harsher penalties would be needed if the broadcasters keep violating the rules of fair coverage of election campaigns.
The Chairman of the Broadcasting Coordinating Council, Dinu Ciocan, said that it is very difficult to have perfectly balanced coverage of political events during election campaigns. He appealed to the broadcasters to take more care to ensure unbiased coverage of the campaign.
The Broadcasting Coordinating Council monitored the main newscasts to check how the election campaign was covered during May 18-27, 2015.
