A Member of the BCC: “All Provisions and Rules of the Game Were Flagrantly Defied”

At the meeting of November 11, the Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC) applied the maximum fine of 5,400 lei to seven televisions and public warnings to two other channels. The sanctions were applied for favoring some candidates and transmission of false information, facts noted in the third BCC report on monitoring the media, for the period of October 20 to 30.

Thus, maximum fines were applied to Prime TV, Canal 3, Canal 2, Publika TV, Jurnal TV, Accent TV and NTV Moldova. They got maximum fines at the previous meeting, too. TV 7 and Ren Moldova were penalized with public warnings.

The BCC underlined at the meeting that televisions turned into battlefields for candidates in elections. “I would say that in this period, during the election campaign before the first round, they fought a tough fight; there was a real massacre, total media carnage. All provisions and rules of the game were flagrantly defied,” said Dragos Vicol, a member of the BCC.

Olga Gututui shared this opinion: “Unfortunately, we see an even sadder trend, when some televisions intensely spread false information. It is regrettable that journalists don’t understand their job and violate common sense and all ethical standards and legal rules of the profession.”

Two televisions – Accent TV and NTV Moldova – were noted for disinformation in newscasts. It occurred in a report on the alleged agreement between candidate Maia Sandu and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to receive Syrian refugees in our country. “In this case, disinformation was made in bad faith. Even if initially journalists didn’t know it was false, candidate Maia Sandu subsequently held a press conference where she denied the information, but the denial was not reported in newscasts,” said Mariana Onceanu-Hadarca, a member of the BCC.

Some members of the BCC pleaded for harsher sanctions, such as temporary withdrawal of the right to air advertising for the channels that spread this report. In the end, however, the BCC decided on the fine of 5,400 lei.

At the meeting, it was announced that the BCC will produce two more monitoring reports, covering the period of October 31 – November 13.