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Broadcasting Council Publicly Warned TVC 21 for Moderator’s ‘Insufficient Intervention’ in a Show with Andrei Nastase

15 January 2019
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On 14 December the Broadcasting Council (BC) issued a public warning against the TVC 21 broadcaster because the moderator of ‘Important’ talk show, Liviu Moraru, failed to intervene sufficiently when the show’s guest (leader of the Dignity and Truth Platform Andrei Nastase) made ‘rude assertions and gave his own opinion about other election candidates’. A representative of the Democratic Party (PD) from the Central Election Commission (CEC) informed the authority.

The appeal filed by Vadim Motarschi, PD representative with right to consultative vote at CEC, says that Maia Sandu and Andrei Nastase participated in some TV shows broadcast on the day they were registered as electoral candidates – on Jurnal TV, in the ‘Ora Expertizei’ show and on TVC 21 in the ‘Glavnoe’ and ‘Important’ shows, which is a violation of the law, because the electoral campaign had not started back then.
In their turn, TVC 21 representatives informed BC that during the ‘Glavnoe’ and ‘Important’ shows the Head of the Action and Solidarity Party Maia Sandu and PDA leader Andrei Nastase participated as party leaders rather than electoral candidates from the ‘ACUM DA and PAS’ Bloc.

As revealed by the monitoring results, no electioneering was made for ‘ACUM DA Platform and PAS’ Electoral Bloc or its members during ‘Ora Expertizei’ show broadcast by ‘Jurnal TV’ on 2 January 2019 and ‘Glavnoe’ show broadcast by ‘TVC 21’ on 3 January 2019.  Furthermore, according to BC, show moderators intervened at some points, warning the guests about the show’s restrictive rules.

Nonetheless, the results of the BC monitoring show that by its ‘Important’ show of 4 January, TVC 21 broadcaster violated the provisions of the Audiovisual Media Services Code regarding ‘ensuring impartiality, balance and promotion of the free formation of opinions by presenting the main points of view in opposition, during a public debate about certain issues.’ However, BC found that the moderator had not intervened enough during the show when Andrei Nastase made ‘unbalanced’ statements.