Most Media Do Tendentious and Unbalanced Coverage of the Election Campaign

The Independent Journalism Center and the Association of Independent Press presented on Wednesday, October 12, the second report on monitoring the campaign for presidential elections of 2016. The document’s authors noted violations of journalist’s code of ethics, the Broadcasting Code and the Elections Code in the period of September 30 to October 6. At the same time, according to the report, the majority of the 28 monitored media outlets failed to ensure pluralism of sources in their reports on various conflicting aspects of the election campaign.

In broadcasting, the situation did not progress much from the previous monitoring period. The 12 monitored televisions aired 706 materials: 644 news reports, 59 shows and 3 vox populi. Most topics related to politics and the electoral process. “The majority of monitored channels failed to comply with the Regulations on the coverage of the campaign for the presidential elections of October 30, 2016 in the media of Moldova and violated the provisions of the Elections Code (Article 64) and the Broadcasting Code (Article 7),” said Nadine Gogu, Executive Director of the Independent Journalism Center.

Private channels with national coverage Prime TV, Canal 2, Canal 3 and Publika TV massively promoted candidate Marian Lupu, both by the frequency and duration of his appearances on the screen and direct quotations, and by the positive context of materials. In contrast, candidates Andrei Nastase and Dumitru Ciubasenco were disfavored in very many materials.

Jurnal TV channel massively favored candidate Andrei Nastase, and the most disfavored candidate, both directly and indirectly, was Marian Lupu.

NTV Moldova and Accent TV favored mostly Igor Dodon. NTV Moldova did not show evident disfavoring of other candidates, while Accent TV disfavored mostly Marian Lupu.

Moldova 1, Realitatea TV, Pro TV Chisinau, TV7 and N4 channels had a relatively balanced behavior, without tendencies of clear favoring or disfavoring of candidates.

“Like in our first report, the majority of the televisions that we monitored provided a tendentious, unbalanced coverage of the election campaign. They did not offer equal access to all candidates, and sometimes behaved like instruments of propaganda, election campaigning, because in some cases private channels with national coverage had their teams of journalists accompany the teams of parties and candidates at all events, and massively aired materials on these events,” Nadine Gogu noted.

As for online portals, in the monitored period they published 514 materials that directly or indirectly related to the election period/campaign, and “texts were of over one million characters,” noted Petru Macovei. The 4 monitored newspapers (Timpul, KP v Moldove, Panorama and Săptămâna) published 37 articles that directly or indirectly referred to presidential elections.

“A general conclusion, valid for the absolute majority of monitored portals, is that they maintained the tendency of covering the election campaign by favoring or disfavoring certain candidates. This favoring or disfavoring doesn’t always occur due to deficient editorial policies, but because outlets don’t have mechanisms of balancing the news stories that they present,” said Petru Macovei.

In this context, the Executive Director of the Association of Independent Press recommended the Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC) to more frequently examine at its meetings the media behavior in the election campaign so as to apply in due time sanctions to the media outlets that violate the broadcasting legislation. He reminded to the BCC that efficient penalties were not applied during the previous election campaign because the BCC very rarely had meetings, and according to the Broadcasting Code sanctions are applied gradually.

The 28 media outlets are being monitored in the period of September 15 – November 13, 2016 as part of a project funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (USA) and the Council of Europe.