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The BCC Warned Four TV Channels for Broadcasting a Reportage that Can Affect a Minor

13 July 2018
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The Broadcasting Coordination Council warned Publika, Prime, Canal 2 and Canal 3 at their meeting on Friday, 13 July, for violating some provisions of the Law on child protection against the negative impact of information, as well as some BCC recommendations in this respect. The reportage was about the case of a minor girl from a locality in Drochia district, broadcasted by the four stations in February.
 
The referral was made by the National Council on Protection of Personal Data, which was notified by the People's Advocate for protection of the child rights.
 
The BCC screened the reportages and determined that violations of the law have been committed.
The General Media Group Corp, Publika TV and Prime founder, believes that journalists have acted correctly. ‘The topics tackled have been addressed in a fair and balanced manner, aimed at protecting the minors’ rights. The subject was done in the spirit of defending the child’s rights’, was company's response to the BCC.
 
 ‘These cases need to be publicized very carefully - we should think how that child feels when seeing a story about him/her-self. The fact that you showed the child's father makes it easy to identify who the child is. There are solutions not allowing anyone to identify the person’, said the BCC member, Olga Gututui.
 
The president of the institution, Dragos Vicol, believes that these four channels presented the story without bad intention and proposed to warn them. Concurrently, he made an appeal to journalists to avoid making sensation of such stories. He urged ‘being more reserved, especially when it is about paedophilia or sexual abuse’.
 
At the same meeting, the BCC fined Spice-Media SRL studio from Susleni village in Orhei district with MDL 40,000 for retransmitting ‘Zvezda’ television channel, which broadcasts military programs.
 
Dragos Vicol announced in this context that BCC will screen once again the extent to which broadcasters comply with the rules. ‘The law must be respected. Repeated monitoring will be conducted in the near future and, if the situation would not be remedied, we will have to apply gradual fines’.
 The BCC also approved the activity report for this year second quarter, a period in which members of the regulatory authority met 11 times and adopted 79 decisions.