Moldova 1 director claims he received death threats

Mircea Surdu, director of Moldova 1 public television, said on Friday, September 11, that he had received death threats. The journalist made this declaration at the meeting with a group of protesters that had come to the offices of the public television in order to demand more objectivity in the coverage of events from Chisinau city center.

“I have been receiving death threats since one o’clock on Sunday, but I kept it in silence and decided not to act as a victim, but to file lawsuits, because it is not the first time,” Surdu said during discussions with protesters. Moldova 1 director also said that, due to lack of time, he had not managed to file a complaint to competent authorities and that he had been receiving such messages after a journalist produced a negative material about Moldova 1 coverage of the events in the Great National Assembly Square.

Moldova 1 director added that the channel’s reporters often complain of the fact that some protesters are aggressive with them.
On Friday, a group of protesters from the Great National Assembly Square, most of them in military uniforms, came in front of the offices of public broadcaster “Teleradio-Moldova” in order to demand the broadcaster’s administration to pay more attention to objective coverage of the protest that is taking place in the square. In addition, they asked for airtime on national television in order to express the position and demands of the protesters’ Group of Mediation and Representation (GMR).

In their turn, the television’s leadership claims that the channel covered the events from the square, had live interventions, and organized programs with the participation of protesters’ representatives according to the requirements of the Broadcasting Code and the standards of journalism ethics.The two parties agreed to discuss over the following days the participation of GMR in the public broadcaster.
In the evening of that day, the public television announced that the “Moldova Live” program was postponed because of some attempts to disrupt public order and some threats that had been received via telephone. The program, according to Moldova 1, was to be attended by the leaders of the Alliance for European Integration-3.

The Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC) has recently brought to the attention of the public broadcaster “Teleradio-Moldova” the need to abide by the rules on provision of information to citizens. “The broadcasting regulator asks the broadcasters that are under the jurisdiction of Moldova, particularly the national broadcaster “Teleradio-Moldova”, to show maximum responsibility and to strictly comply with the Broadcasting Code, to ensure the freedom of expression and unrestricted access to any information, to correctly and impartially present events of public interest, and to guarantee pluralistic expression of ideas and opinions in their programs,” the BCC says in a press release.