Findings of a New Monitoring Report: The Media Continue to Display their Political Sympathies in the Second Round of the Presidential Election

The sixth report on the mass-media monitoring during the election campaign, launched on Thursday, 10^th of November, by the Independent Journalism Center (IJC) and the Association of Independent Press (API) points out that the phenomenon of favouring/disfavouring certain candidates still existed at this stage of the campaign.
 
During the reporting period – 29^th of October – 5^th of November – there was a decrease by nearly 40% of the number of broadcast news and a sudden increase of the number of articles published on news websites. Nadine Gogu, IJC Executive Director, stated that the 12 broadcasters aired 682 materials with a direct or indirect electoral content, what represents a reduction by 40% compared to the previous monitoring period. "Igor Dodon was the most favoured competitor in terms of context of the mass-media appearances. He was shown 116 times in a good light and 80 times - in a bad light. Maia Sandu was mostly disadvantaged, having been shown in a bad light in 146 materials and in a good light – in 103 materials", Nadine Gogu noted.

At the same time, according to the report, the 12 websites subject to monitoring presented the candidate Igor Dodon three times more often in a negative context, than in a positive one. The candidate Maia Sandu was presented both in a positive, and in a negative context, the situations of editorial disadvantage being however predominant. The newspapers subject to monitoring disadvantaged more, from the perspective of the frequency of appearances and of the negative context, the candidate Igor Dodon.

In this context, Petru Macovei, API Executive Director, stated: "In the second round of the election, we remark the accentuation of the favouring/disfavouring positions versus different candidates. The rules of journalistic deontology continue to be infringed, there is still a large number of poorly documented materials, that is from a single source, developed based on the statements of candidates". The API Director urged the journalists to be more active and "give media coverage to the election campaign in a diverse way, at least throughout the several days remaining until the second round of the election."

The IJC and API submit weekly monitoring reports that are afterwards transmitted to the media subject to monitoring, to the Central Electoral Commission and to the Broadcasting Coordinating Council.
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Monitoring is conducted in the framework of a project financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (USA) and the Council of Europe. The project is focused on monitoring and public opinion information about the editorial behaviour of the mass-media institutions during the electoral period and the campaign for the presidential election in the Republic of Moldova.