7th Monitoring Report Authors: “Apart from Partisanship, We Discovered Defamation, Manipulation, Disinformation”

The media committed manipulation during the election campaign, and this fact was particularly pronounced in the second round of the election – this is one of the findings of the 7^th monitoring report developed by the Independent Journalism Centre (IJC) and the Association of Independent Press (API), presented on Wednesday, 16^th of November. The report covered the period from 6^th to 11^th of November 2016.
 
The 12 TV stations aired mostly political materials, less materials focused on the campaign, the report reveals. Igor Dodon was favoured in 158 materials and disfavoured 87 times. Maia Sandu was presented in a good light in 91 materials and was disfavoured 229 times.

IJC Executive Director, Nadine Gogu, drew attention to the fact that the assessment of the media conduct has a very important role for the evaluation of the fairness and freedom of the elections and that from this perspective "we can conclude that the election was not fair". At the same time, Nadine Gogu recalled the case studies that accompany the seven reports and that analyse the broadcasts from the perspective of their compliance with the Code of Deontology. "With this in mind, we can say that, apart from partisanship, we revealed defamation, manipulation, disinformation", IJC Executive Director said.

As for the 12 news websites and three in the four newspapers subject to monitoring (after the first round of the election, the Panorama newspaper suspended its print version), Igor Dodon was the most disfavoured by them and Maia Sandu was presented in a positive and a negative light, at an almost equal extent.

Being asked if the candidates have grounds for a lawsuit against the media for certain materials disseminated during the election campaign, the API Executive Director replied: "Certainly, there are grounds, because there were many fakes and much defamation against certain candidates. Of course, we wish a greater responsibility of the media, including during the election campaigns, and the fact that certain electronic or print publications hit below the belt, in the direct and indirect sense of the word, points out that the respective publications are fully engaged in favour of a certain candidate. Of course, there is freedom of expression, on the one side, but there is also a principle about the journalist’s responsibility, on the other side".

The general conclusions of the 7^th monitoring report covering the period 6^th – 11^th of November 2016 may be accessed here.

A final report covering the entire monitoring period will be presented by the IJC and API on Friday, 25^th of November 2016.
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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.