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The EU: Media Control Limited the Pluralism
According to the Statement of the the European Union Delegation to the Republic of Moldova, the elections were ‘competitive and fundamental rights were generally respected’.
The EU Delegation’s statement was based on the preliminary findings of the OSCE/ODIHR election observation mission. ‘The control and ownership of media sources by political stakeholders limited the plurality of views presented to voters’, the Delegation representatives emphasized.
Preliminary Findings of the OSCE Office
The preliminary findings of these international media monitoring organizations have shown that some national television stations have not complied with the rigors of fair media coverage of the campaign. All monitored broadcasters met their legal obligation to organize debates, but the competitors that benefited from extensive free and paid advertising tended not to participate, the report states.
The document mentions that the Democratic Party (PD) began its campaign for the referendum ‘making use of billboards and media advertising since the beginning of January, one month before the launch of the parliamentary elections campaign’.
Trolls ‘Deleted’ by Facebook
The authors of the report remind that on 13 February, Facebook announced the cancellation of 168 accounts, 28 pages, and 8 Instagram accounts due to ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior’. The Government came up with an official statement and the ACUM Electoral Block filed a complaint with the CEC requesting the cancellation of the PD registration referring to a possible “online nationwide manipulation interference”.
Furthermore, the rapporteurs mentioned that a week prior to the election day, a Google advertisement appeared on several news websites from the Republic of Moldova ridiculing the ACUM Bloc, and its sponsors remained unknown.
Media Control
The report also contains information on media control and ownership, which, in the view of the rapporteurs, decreased the voters’ access to the diversity of opinions limiting their ability to make a truly informed choice. IEOM stated that some interlocutors also expressed concerns about the risks to the financial autonomy of some media outlets, given the commercial pressures from two large advertising companies associated with politicians.
As far as the new Broadcasting Code is concerned, in the experts’ opinion, the document has not solved the legal loopholes concerning the issue of media ownership, which leads to unjustified political influence. According to the report, despite a constitutional provision, the current law on access to information does not provide for access to information of public interest, so that journalists face substantial delays in receiving information from state structures, which violates international standards.
ENEMO: BC Was Ineffective
As in the IEOM and OSCE/ODIHR reports, ENEMO rapporteurs note that, despite the large number of media outlets, plurality of views was hampered by a high ownership concentration and close ties between the media and politics. ENEMO argues that although the Broadcasting Council sanctioned a number of media outlets for bias to the advantage or disadvantage of certain competitors, the authority’s monitoring and sanctioning mechanism was ineffective and failed to guarantee impartial and balanced points of views to voters.
ENEMO believes that the BC’s monitoring and sanctioning mechanism is ineffective for several reasons: due to the period between the issuing of the reports, which is too long for an election campaign of only 30 days; the pace of the monitoring report review, which is too slow to ensure a rapid response; as well as due to the types of sanctions applied that were not dissuasive, since almost all media outlets repeated the same offense or a similar offense after having been sanctioned/warned for the first time.
‘The combination of these elements makes the monitoring and sanctioning mechanism a pure formality and fails to guarantee impartial and balanced points of view to the voters in order to make an informed choice during the election,’ the report states.
The CIS Observers: The Media Actively Reflected the Campaign
For their part, the CIS international observers mentioned in a press release concerning the conduct of parliamentary elections and the consultative republican referendum of 24 February, that they noted that the media from the Republic of Moldova actively covered all the aspects of the electoral campaign.
Furthermore, at a news conference, they announced that the BC had issued a warning to Jurnal TV and TVC 21 television broadcasters stating that Jurnal TV had been sanctioned for its editorial policy.
BC Explanation on the Sanctions
When asked why the Broadcasting Council’s sanctions were ineffective, the authority president Dragos Vicol replied at the Media Azi TV show that the authority had to comply with certain bureaucratic procedures, such as requesting the broadcaster’s opinion and publishing the decision in the Official Gazette. ‘We could not move faster and so far we have only two reports available for the simple reason that the legal procedure involves certain steps. After summing up information (editor’s note: the monitoring results) we must request the opinion of the accused station and the accused station, which had received our arguments, does not always react promptly. Though we send the request both by email and physical mail, asking them to express their view in one day or two days. If we see them reluctant to present a reaction, we review the case in their absence’, Dragos Vicol explained.
Independent Journalism Center and the Association of Independent Press launched, in the pre-election and election period, five monitoring reports, the final one, the sixth, to be presented on 13 March.
