The Access to Information Remains One of the Government’s Arrears in the Field of Mass-media

The NGO Coalition for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) publicised on Monday, 16th of May, in a press conference, the monitoring results and the recommendations for the enforcement and promotion of political and civil rights in Moldova. In the field of the mass-media, the main Government’s arrears still are the access to information, the press freedom, the freedom of expression, etc.

Alesia Vidruk, programme manager at Civil Rights Defenders organization, stated that after the United Nations Session held in 2012 up to the present, the Republic of Moldova had to implement 122 recommendations formulated by the member countries within the United Nations Human Rights Council and this year our country will have to report on their implementation. The civil society made a review of the actions undertaken by the authorities in order to put into practice the 122 recommendations and highlighted other current issues needing to be resolved. The Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ), Nadine Gogu, said that the access to information remains one of the main mass-media problems, being mostly faced by investigative journalists. “We recommend the modification of the legal framework aiming at its alignment with the international standards – including the Law on the Commercial Secret, as well as the Law on State Secret”, Nadine Gogu stated.

One of the recommendations prescribes the cancellation of fees that the journalists have to pay currently in order to obtain information from the State institutions, such as Cadastre authorities or State Registration Chamber. “The journalists who conduct journalistic investigations usually need a lot of information, and when cumulated, the sum to be paid is rather high and not all the media may afford to pay it. At the same time, we consider that civil servants should be trained in terms of this law enforcement in order to enable them provide answers to requests for access to information in a more specific, clearer language and to respond in the official language. Or, a range of problems related to the quality of answers given by civil servants to the requests for access to information have been pointed out”, Nadine Gogu said.

A broad chapter of the NGO Coalition’s report concerns the press freedom and it deals with such issues as: the phenomenon of mass-media concentration, the propaganda in the media, the Law on advertising. To settle the problems accumulated in these areas, the experts recommended a number of changes to the legal framework.

The NGO Coalition for the Universal Periodic Review consists of Civil Rights Defenders organization, “Lawyers for Human Rights” Association, HomoDiversus Association, the Association of Independent Press, the Centre for Analysis and Corruption Prevention, the Independent Journalism Centre, the Information Centre for Human Rights, the Information and Legal Centre “Apriori”, „GENDERDOC-M” Non-discrimination Coalition, the Institute for Human Rights, the Piligrim Demo Organization, Promo-LEX Organization.