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According to the monitoring report “Assessing the messages that instigate to hatred in the online media”, conducted by the Center for Independent Journalism in May 2015, the most serious cases of messages instigating to hatred are found in the news on ethnic and sexual minorities. Serious deviations from the common sense, ethical rules and legislation are not only seen in the journalists’ materials, but also in comments on the online portals. In the view of Viorica Zaharia, media expert, the messages of hatred in the virtual space goes hand in hand with the discriminatory messages. “Fortunately, it is not journalists who promote the instigation to homophobia, racial or inter-ethnic hatred. The texts published online are, in most cases, written in a neutral language, without denigrating words or stereotypes. It is more complicated with the comments”, says Viorica Zaharia.
“From the technical point of view, no 100% filtering is possible. It is necessary that the comments that are left after technical filtering are seen by the content managers. It usually happens in case of pieces of news in which the Internet users post a large number of comments and the content administrators, most probably, do not manage to process them all”, Viorica Zaharia comments.
In this case, according to Viorica Zaharia, it is up to the journalists and to the editors of media institutions to moderate the comments and the solution is well known: to introduce filters that block part of the comments and then have the content managers check them. Another tool that many media institutions have is placing a message in the space allocated for comments that warns those who want to comment that if they write insults or instigate to hatred towards some groups of people, the comment will be deleted.
Photo: Oleg Brega
Oleg Brega considers that the most relevant method for eliminating messages of hatred from the comments posted on social networks is to report on such users. “It is efficient to comment critically or to report to the administration messages that are dangerous for the society, but on some social networks or media websites these tools do not exist or are not functional. In this case, it is necessary to write complaints to the police/prosecutor’s office and to sue them”, the activist says.
Veaceslav Balan, legal expert and human rights expert, says that the Moldovan legislation bans any form of discrimination, including messages of hatred. “In the Republic of Moldova, the Law on ensuring equality stipulates in art. 2 the prohibition to instigate to discrimination, while art. 4 refers to the serious forms of discrimination, such as supporting discrimination through the media and placing instigating messages and symbols in public places”.
The expert says that sanctions including criminal ones, as stipulated in art. 176 of the Criminal Code are established for messages of hatred.
“According to this article, the messages of hatred are subject to punishment in line with the criminal procedure”, Veaceslav Balan says. However, the legal expert highlights, this article has not been enforced so far, which does not mean that it will not be enforced in the future. Before getting to criminal sanctions, the journalists and human rights experts believe that the messages of hatred can be fought through trainings and by educating a tolerant behavior in the virtual space. “This environment offers you freedom of expression, but not the freedom to offend, instigate to hatred or discrimination”, Viorica Zaharia says in conclusion.
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This material is published under the „Fighting against messages of hatred in the online media and on the social networks” implemented by the CIJ with support of Civil Rights Defenders (Sweden), partner of the CIJ. The content of the material does not necessarily reflect the funder’s view.
