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Irina Papuc, a journalist of the information portal E-sănătate.md, wrote on Tuesday that she had been asked to leave an event organized by the Ministry of Health on 31 January. In their turn, representatives of the Ministry’s press service claim that it was a private workshop, where the media were not invited.
“For the first time in my experience as journalist I was “asked” to leave an event, and I was also clearly told that I couldn’t take reports, files or data that were presented during the event,” Irina Papuc wrote in the article titled How I got to be banished from a public event organized by the Ministry of Health, published on the online platform E-sanatate.
Irina Papuc wrote that she had participated as a journalist in a public event organized by the Ministry of Health, where they discussed official and unofficial payments in the health system. “At not even half of the event I was approached by the head of the press service, Viorica Tudos, who told me to exit the room and to leave the report (with some very interesting data) on the table,” the journalist wrote.
“It wasn’t specified that it was a workshop where the media had no access, or that it was a secret, or that journalists could not participate. I see it this way: since it appeared on the website of the Ministry of Health, since it had been made public, there should have been no restriction of access,” Irina Papuc added for Media Azi.
In the context of this incident, the journalist asked for explanations the head of the press service Viorica Tudos, who told her that her exclusion from the event was the wish of Jarno Habicht, head of the World Health Organization (WHO) office in Moldova. At a later time, however, Habicht told her that he knew nothing about it.
“Such indications certainly came from vice ministers present at the event, as no one else could have made them,” Papuc added for Media Azi. The journalist also said that it was not the first time when ministry employees showed a negative attitude towards reporters. “It was not a surprise for me; we [editor’s note – E-sanatate] have had somewhat hostile relations with the Ministry of Health for some time. Many of our requests remain unanswered or, if we ask for even the smallest details, we are told that we will be replied in 30 working days. The Ministry then stops answering the phone, the vice ministers answer rarely, and heads of departments can tell us nothing, motivating it that they have no right to do so without the agreement of the press service,” Irina Papuc said.
On Tuesday, 4 January, Media Azi contacted Viorica Tudos, the head of the press service of the Ministry of Health. She claimed that the event was a workshop and not a public event. “I asked her respectfully to leave the room and not use the information, because it was, first of all, a preliminary, unfinished report about indirect payments in the health system. It was a working meeting to inform doctors, directors of hospitals, so that they could discuss, make conclusions, and agree on the following steps. It was a workshop. An internal event. Indeed, no one from the media was invited,” she said.
Viorica Tudos believes that Irina Papuc’s article is inappropriate. “It is a tendentious attitude of Ms Papuc. Especially as she also writes that she was treated with indifference by the head of the press service or that the minister refused her. Probably at some moment he did not pay her attention. But I would like to remind her that I have recently organized for her an interview with the minister,” Tudos said. She added that she understood the journalist’s displeasure, as she comes “from the same class,” but that in this case there are also other important aspects: “where E-sanatate is funded from, who is in charge of it, and why it has such a tendentious attitude towards the Ministry of Health,” Tudos concluded, without giving more details.
