BC Acting as a Professor: The Council Will Monitor the Compliance With the Linguistic Correctness by Many TV Stations

The Broadcasting Council (BC) will monitor, during March-April 2019, the linguistic correctness of 13 TV stations. A decision in this respect was taken at the meeting of 5 March, which was unanimously supported by the nine members of the Council.
Thus, the TV stations Moldova 1, TV 8, Prime, Publika TV, Canal 2, Canal 3, Accent TV, NTV Moldova, PRO TV Chisinau, Jurnal TV, RTR Moldova, Orhei TV and Central Television will be under the close scrutiny of BC, which will identify the most serious and common errors of expression to be made public along with the correct versions.

The TV Monitoring Department of BC will monitor the news broadcasts, cinematographic works (subtitles), verbal messages which the journalists, presenters, hosts, producers of TV stations assume responsibility for, as well as the talk shows for children. Interventions and verbal sequences of the studio guests and vox populi will not be subject to monitoring.
BC has stated that through such monitoring activities it is aimed to ensure the cultural and linguistic heritage in the audiovisual media services and to fulfill the commitment of the National Action Plan implementing the EU-Moldova Association Agreement, where there is a mention of the need for thematic monitoring on safeguarding the cultural and national heritage.

‘It is common practice. We do not initiate this for the first time’, Dragos Vicol, BC Chair, explained the above decision during the meeting.
Another BC member, Corneliu Mihalache, added that although linguistic correctness is an important issue, it would be equally necessary to monitor the broadcasters in terms of ensuring the local content share.
Dragos Vicol specified that the process of ensuring the local content monitoring was at the stage of approval of some acts that would allow the Council to perform the monitoring in line with the requirements of the new Broadcasting Code.

Earlier, during the Press Club organised by the Independent Journalism Center in January, where the ‘Elements of Propaganda, Information Manipulation, and Violation of Journalism Ethics in the Local Media (1 October – 31 September 2018)’ Report was discussed, many journalists had objections to BC. They criticized the broadcasting authority for not monitoring and responding promptly to the serious violations on the part of the broadcasters, such as mixing of facts with opinions, failure to observe the right of reply, selective presentation of facts and statements, generalizations and labels.

Lidia Viziru, a BC member, who attended the Discussion Club, said then that the BC does not have the necessary capacities to conduct long-term monitoring activities during several weeks or months.