Press Statement: the Supervisory Board of Teleradio-Moldova Mimicked the Democratic Election of the Chairman of the National Public Broadcaster

Media NGOs have followed closely how the Supervisory Board of Teleradio-Moldova conducted the contest for appointing the Chairman of the national public broadcaster and found the following:

• The members of the Supervisory Board paid only superficial attention to the application files of the candidates for the position of Chairman of the National Public Broadcaster; intentionally or not, they did not take the time to check the veracity of the CVs or the substance/thoroughness of the projects of intention;
• The members of the Supervisory Board have violated the ad hoc rules of the contest without any proper justification, by accepting that several candidates take the floor for lengthy presentations of their projects, followed by questions that were not connected in any way with the subject matter of the contest;
• The members of the Supervisory Board have not specified in the ad hoc rules any measurable, specific, credible selection criteria, depending on the quality of the application files. Hence, they followed the reprehensible example of the Media Committee in Parliament, when they elected the members of the Supervisory Board;
• Despite the fact that the application files were made public and thus could be assessed by anyone interested in the topic, the members of the Supervisory Board made a choice (with five favorable votes), without actually taking into account the contents of the files;
• The members of the Supervisory Board have only mimicked a democratic exercise of appointing someone to an important position, although that person will be in charge of the quality of broadcast media products and will be paid by the taxpayers.

 
Given all these, media NGOs request:
 

• The honorable resignation of the 5 members who voted to appoint the Chairman of Teleradio-Moldova on 4 June 2015, without having studied and analyzed thoroughly the files of the candidates for the job, as it might damage public interests;
• A germane response from the Broadcasting Coordinating Council regarding the way in which the contest organized by the Supervisory Board was conducted, given that the national institution in charge of regulating the broadcasting sector proposes the candidates for membership in the Supervisory Board, in the first place;
• The germane response by the specialized standing committee in Parliament, which appointed the members of the Supervisory Board, without having any credible criteria at hand, and which subsequently refrained from exercising parliamentary control over the activity of both the Supervisory Board and the National Public Broadcaster;
• The germane response of Parliament regarding the way in which the contest was conducted by the Supervisory Board, given that both the Supervisory Board and the National Public Broadcaster are under parliamentary control.

Independent Journalism Center
Independent Press Association
Acces-Info Center
Electronic Press Association
Young Journalist Center of Moldova
Committee for Press Freedom