Video Spot // Journalists to Officials and Civil Servants: ‘Stop Ignoring the Requests for Information. The Citizens Who Pay Your Salaries Need It!’

The restricted access to public information still remains a problem for the journalists from the Republic of Moldova. The Independent Journalism Center (IJC) decided to notify the authorities again, launching this time a video spot where a number of journalists warn the civil servants that they are not open enough and that they hide the data the journalists require from them.

They argue that access to information is restricted under different pretexts – personal data protection, state and trade secrets; qualifying requests for information as petitions; journalists’ obligation to request information via letters instead of emails or telephone calls, etc.   

‘Stop ignoring our requests for information. The citizens who pay your salaries need it!’, journalists explain.

Over the past three years, IJC has been working hard to improve the Law on Access to Information. In July 2018, a draft law, including also the recommendations of media NGOs, was tabled in Parliament. Therefore, as the authors of the spot mention, ‘the solution exists, it should only be adopted’.