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Monitoring Report: The BC did not Apply Sanctions towards TV Channels that Violated the Electoral Legislation, but Instead Issued a ‘Set of Recommendations’

18 March 2019
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În Moldova
The last monitoring report on TV channels coverage during the Parliamentary Elections campaign, carried out and presented at the Broadcasting Council (BC) hearing on Friday, 15 March, did not include sanctions, but just a set of recommendations for all TV channels.The BC report referred to the situation froms of 14 to 24 February and, among other findings, it was mentioned that the majority of monitored TV channels did not fully complied with the electoral legislation.

According to the monitoring report, the TV channels PRIME TV, Publika TV, Canal 2, Accent TV, NTV Moldova, RTR Moldova, Televiziunea Centrala (Central Television) and Orhei TV have committed violations related to failure to ensure impartiality, balance and foster freedom of opinion formation, lack of opponents' main points of views in news and debates programmes, omissions in providing data about disseminated opinion polls, etc. TV 8, PRO TV Chisinau and Jurnal TV were the only TV channels that did not break the electoral and audiovisual legislation.

The BC member, Olga Gututui, pleaded for applying sanctions towards those TV channels that have not behaved properly during the electoral campaign.  The BC President, Dragos Vicol, proposed to issue a set of recommendations instead of sanctions and this proposal was supported by other BC members.
According to BC's set of recommendations, the TV channels were urged to ensure impartiality, balance and foster freedom of opinion formation, interpret in sign language or synchronously subtitle at least one audiovisual news programme from the daily broadcasting time, respect gender balance in the framework of information programmes, etc.

The TV channels monitored by BC were: Moldova 1, TV8, Prime, Publika TV, Canal 2 (Channel 2), Canal 3 (Channel 3), Accent TV, NTV Moldova, PRO TV Chisinau, Jurnal TV, RTR Moldova, Orhei TV and Televiziunea Centrala (Central Television).