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On 3 May, dozens of journalists and representatives of civil society participated in the Solidarity March, which kicked off the Press Freedom Days in Moldova. The demonstrators went to the Parliament, the Presidency, the Government and the Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC) to hand them the Memorandum on Press Freedom in the Republic of Moldova for 3 May 2017 – 3 May 2018. The document highlighted problems faced by journalists. The march began in front of the Parliament, where the participants chanted: ‘Freedom to the press!’ ‘No to manipulations!’ ‘No to press monopolisation!’, and other slogans, yet none of the MPs came out to talk with the demonstrators. The march proceeded then at the Presidency, as demonstrators continued to chant slogans about counteracting Russian propaganda, manipulation, misinformation and media concentration. At the Presidency the demonstrators were met by a representative who informed them that the President had left for an official business, while at the Government no public servant showed interest in the protesters’ demands.
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At a press conference organised on 3 May on the occasion of the World Press Freedom Day, the Speaker Andrian Candu was asked by a reporter why he had not come to talk with the participants in the Solidarity March. Candu said, among other things, that march participants ‘do nothing else but write projects, get external funding and spend that money. And they are accustomed to organize protests on this day of the year.’... Several media NGOs – the Independent Journalism Center, the Association of Independent Press, the Association of Electronic Press, the Center for Investigative Journalism, the Press Freedom Committee, the Association of Independent TV Journalists and the ‘Acces-Info’ expressed their disagreement with these statements. They stated in a joint declaration that the solidarity march meant continuation of tradition of promoting the values of the free press in Moldova and that the dialogue between the journalists and governors is natural. The signatories also have reminded that without the support of external donors, media in the Republic of Moldova would have been either party-related or fully dependent on politicians, and that in the absence of fair competition on the media market, external projects are of vital importance for the media.
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In a survey organized by the Independent Journalism Center, 23 publishers were asked to name three institutions that either failed to reply within the time period stipulated by the law, or offered a very broad reply. Thus, the Presidency was mentioned in the survey eight times, while the Ministry of Health, Labor and Social Protection (MSMPS) – six times. Third place went to the State Tax Service (mentioned four times). Journalists also listed the reasons invoked by authorities when refusing to provide requested information. In nine cases no reply was offered at all, without any explanation. Personal data protection proved to be the most popular reason, having been cited in eight cases. Trade secret was invoked twice.
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On 19 January 2018, PRO TV Chisinau, RTR-Moldova, Jurnal TV and TV 8 have filed a joint complaint to the Competition Council accusing two sales houses – Casa Media and Exclusive Sales House – of having concluded a cartel agreement, thereby creating abuse of their dominant position on the market. Since they have not received any answer from the CC yet, Catalin Giosan, the administrator of ICS Pro Digital SRL Company that owns PRO TV Chișinău, requested from the CC (by a separate letter sent on 23 May) the status of the joint complaint that had been filed in January. It also pointed to the expiry of the term for issuance of the order on carrying out the investigation, with ‘no such order being issued.’ PRO TV Chisinau claims that it is ‘largely affected’ by the situation and wants the CC to urgently intervene in order to sanction those in fault, demanding cancellation of the contracts signed with the two sales houses so far.
A group of seven non-governmental media organizations notified the Minister of Internal Affairs that a circulation of the ‘Cuvantul’ regional newspaper of Rezina was seized at the order of the Economic Police Department of the Rezina Police Inspectorate, while being transported from the printing house to Rezina post office in a privately owned car. The signatories demanded from the Minister of Internal Affairs, Alexandru Jizdan, to initiate an internal investigation and to remove immediately the seizure so that the copies of ‘Cuvantul’ newspaper would reach the readers, without depriving them of the right to information. They also urged the Prime Minister Pavel Filip and the Speaker of the Parliament Andrian Candu to take action to elucidate the true causes of this incident and the possible political implications, given that the newspaper previously published a range of critical materials about the district management.
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On the occasion of the Press Freedom Days, the Department for Media Law and Policy of the Independent Journalism Centre (IJC) launched a new section called ‘Media Lawyer’. Every Friday IJC lawyers will answer the questions of journalists and media outlets representatives related to medial legislation, their rights and responsibilities, freedom of expression, and publish the answers on the www.media-azi.md portal along with consultations on the issues related to protection of honor, dignity and business reputation, access to information, right to privacy, legal status of the media outlets, copyright, etc.
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The new Council of Observers (CO) of the ‘Teleradio Gagauzia’ Public Regional Company appointed the journalist Vitalie Gaidarji as the institution’s acting director. It was the fourth attempt to appoint the GRT acting director, after the editor-in-chief of GRT TV channel Galina Mariesieva, editor-in-chief of the radio station Natalia Jelezova and the chief engineer Iaroslav Bulgaru refused to take up this post. Gaidarji worked at GRT for several years and believes that he will be able to settle the conflict that lasts for several weeks after the People’s Assembly dismissed the Council of Observers of the Public Regional Company and appointed its new composition.
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The majority of participants to the ‘Media Trust in the Republic of Moldova: Public and Journalist Perception’ Survey recently launched in Chisinau, felt that media sources in the country are not credible, especially when it comes to political information. Director of the Project Office of the Friedrich Naumann STIFTUNG for Freedom for Southeast Europe Daniel Kaddik attended the study launch event. Kaddick expressed concern about the fact that 80% of focus group participants stated that the media was under political control. ‘Fortunately, there is a vaccine against political influence on the media. It is called independent and courageous investigative journalists,’ said Daniel Kaddik. The document contains two studies. The first one, entitled ‘Media in the Republic of Moldova. Investigative Journalism’, was conducted by IMAS. The second study, called ‘The Media Market and Investigative Journalism in the Republic of Moldova’, was developed by RISE Moldova journalist Ion Preasca.
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The definition of new notions such as information of public interest, expansion of the number of subjects of information upon citizens’ requests and other provisions were discussed within Parliamentary Working Group on improving the legislation on mass-media, which convened in the first half of May. In particular, the proposals for amending and completing the Law on Access to Information, the Law on Freedom of Expression and the Law on Personal Data Protection were discussed. A proposal of substituting the ‘official information’ notion with the ‘information of public interest’ one was examined among others. The latter will mean any information and/or content regardless of its medium (on paper, electronic or any other format), including personal data of public interest that concern activities or result from activities of information providers.
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The Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC) penalized two service distributors by applying them a fine of MDL 40,000 for rebroadcasting some TV channels prohibited by the legislation in force. According to BCC controls, the Sky-Max TV operator in Ciorescu commune rebroadcast programs of the Pervyi Kanal and Zvezda television broadcasters from the Russian Federation. BCC was notified about this by the inhabitants of the commune. The second penalized operator is TV-TRUC, which manages the Prut cable TV studio in Cahul town and rebroadcast programs of the RBK and RTR Planeta television broadcasters, that took over the news programs from Rossia Vesti.
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The Independent Journalism Center has been weekly monitoring the behaviour of ten broadcasters in the new local elections from 20 April till 20 May. The monitoring data show that the majority of TV channels failed to provide equal access to all election candidates registered in the campaign, and did not ensure the plurality of opinions or the balance of the sources. Another finding says that Prime TV, Canal 2 and Publika TV national broadcasters, despite announcing that they would not cover the election campaign, continued to broadcast various explicit and indirect electoral materials in the newscasts, thus massively favouring certain candidates and disadvantaging the others. According to these four reports, the majority of broadcasters continued their political partisanship throughout their electoral campaign, while during its last week, several TV channels openly promoted some of the candidates.
On Thursday, 10 May, the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections and the Working Group for Monitoring the Mass Media Behaviour during Elections requested the Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC) to initiate the monitoring of Prime TV, Canal 2 and Publika TV channels. The latter, while declaring that they would not cover the election campaign, in fact broadcast multiple electoral news, favouring or disadvantaging certain election candidates. Some of them showed biased behaviour and failed to ensure plurality of opinions. The Coalition members asked the BCC to monitor the behaviour of these broadcasters between 20 April 2018 and 20 May 2018.
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The request to monitor Prime TV, Canal 2 and Publika TV channels addressed by the Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections to the BCC was not discussed during the BCC meeting of 17 May before the Sunday elections of 20 May, in spite of the fact that the BCC Chairperson Dragos Vicol stated in a letter of response that ‘the respective notification will be examined in a public meeting.’ During this meeting, several requests to monitor the channels that stated they would not cover the current election campaign happening in Chisinau were overlooked, including the notification of the BCC member Olga Gututui.
BCC examined its own report on monitoring ten television broadcasters: Moldova-1, TV8, Accent TV, ITV, NTV Moldova, TVC 21, Exclusiv TV, Jurnal TV, Ren Moldova and RTR Moldova for the time period 30 April – 9 May 2018. Following the monitoring, BCC publicly warned TV 8 and RTR Moldova television broadcasters and imposed fines of MDL 10,000 on NTV Moldova and Jurnal TV, MDL 7,500 on Ren Moldova and MDL 5,000 on Accent TV.
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On Tuesday, 22 May, the Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC) has publicly warned Prime TV, Publika TV, Canal 2, Canal 3 and CTC Mega television broadcasters for the failure to maintain impartiality and political and social pluralism in the election campaign for the new local elections. The sanction was applied after the BCC monitored the behaviour of these channels throughout the entire election campaign, following the notifications submitted to the BCC by NGOs, election candidates for the position of Chisinau municipality Mayor General and ordinary citizens. According to the BCC report, the respective broadcasters, despite declaring that they would not cover the election campaign, were impartial when presenting certain news during it. Thus, the most covered persons in the newscasts were the election candidates Silvia Radu and Andrei Nastase. The latter was mostly covered in a negative light, while Silvia Radu was presented more positively.
The main media NGOs signed a public call urging the media representatives to show more accuracy and impartiality in covering the second round of elections, which will take place on 3 June. They requested all media outlets to respect legal and ethical norms, as well as to display proper and impartial conduct during the second round of the new local elections campaign. The Call signatories urged media representatives to avoid playing into politicians’ hands and to offer an objective and impartial coverage of events within informative and analytical TV programs throughout the second round of the new local elections campaign.
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Public authorities should pay more attention to the issues of local media and develop sustainable public policies in this regard. These and other topics were discussed at the ‘Mass-media locale: Quo Vadis?’ (Local Media: Quo Vadis?) Conference organised by the Association of Independent Press within the Press Freedom Days. More than 40 managers from various regional media outlets met in Chisinau to jointly identify solutions to the economic, financial and editorial issues they face. The activity was organized by the support of the ‘Media Enabling Democracy, Inclusion and Accountability in Moldova’ (MEDIA-M) project, funded by USAID and implemented by Internews.
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Internews has organized the first media literacy class for children with hearing loss. Maria Cudlenco, one of the 16 Novateca librarians involved in MEDIA-M project, organized in May the first media literacy training session, with translation in sign language, for the children and young people of the boarding school for children with hearing loss in Cahul.
Coming along with a special translator, she explained what is trustworthy information and what is manipulation, how to distinguish between the two and how to be more secure on the internet.
Note that all 16 Novateca librarians, trained in Media and Information Literacy by IREX Europe Moldova, organized within MEDIA-M project more than 200 training sessions all around the country in the period January–May 2018, and informed more than 4,000 people about techniques of propaganda and manipulation of information in the media, developed skills to rural population to disseminate and critically analyze information, so that people would differentiate between facts and opinions. MEDIA-M is a five-year program, launched by Internews with the financial support of USAID in 2017 in Moldova.
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The 74th edition of the show referred to the new local elections – their coverage in the media and monitoring of media’s behaviour in the elections by the BCC. The topic was discussed by the journalist Irina Gotisan and her guests, Olga Gututui, member of the Broadcasting Coordinating Council, and Ion Bunduchi, media expert, executive director of the Association of Electronic Press. The Executive Director of the Independent Journalism Center Nadine Gogu and her guests – investigative journalist of RISE Moldova Liuba Sevciuc and the legal expert at the Legal Resources Center Ion Guzun have discussed the subject of groundless attacks on the participants of the Press Solidarity March in the 75th edition of Media Azi. How do we spot fake news? – the journalist Anastasia Nani and her guest, Lilia Zaharia (the reporter of the StopFals portal) have analysed in the 76th edition of Media Azi talk show a fake coverage published on a Moldovan website as allegedly taken over from Al Jazeera TV channel.
It showed the candidate for the position mayor of Chisinau municipality who supposedly said he would offer the capital of the Republic of Moldova for 50 years to Arab citizens, if he becomes a mayor. The 77th edition talks about the seizure of ‘Cuvantul’ regional newspaper by Rezina police. The journalist Nicolae Negru found out more about this case from the head of the publication Tudor Iascenco. What does Russian press from Moldova think about the anti-propaganda measures taken by the current Government? This subject is discussed in the 78th edition of Media Azi talk show by the host – journalist Ivan Sveatcenko, and his guests – Head of TASS Representative Office in Moldova Valerii Demidetki, and TVC 21 anchor, journalist Lilia Burakovski.
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