Like economy, like economic press

Ion PREASCA
editor-in-chief, Business News Service

I received the proposal to write an article about the economic journalism in Moldova and the problems it faces in the very day when the site www.mold-street.com, for which I write, was blocked.
The reason for this was not an increased interest towards a sensational article about a certain transaction or someone’s successful business story. The news that broke the record for the number of visits and shares was about the new register of historic monuments in Chisinau. The great interest was caused by the title of the article, in which was mentioned a famous capital club included in this register.

 

 

I was very pleased by the fact that the news attracted such a great number of visits. After all, on the frequency of visits depends the amount of the advertising placed on a site. It is true that the number of visits may be slightly “inflated” by contracting the “services” of some special professionals. But is it's the solution? I do not think so. After all, the advertisers are not stupid. I was very upset by the fact that the number of visits does not increase also when we address serious subjects, such as the tax increases, public money wastage, embargoes, etc. It turns out that the potential advertising providers don’t care about the content of the materials placed on the, but only about the number of visits.
 
More precisely, the content is important but only when it contains some negative information about them, such as a fraud or a decline in business. And here a dilemma arises. Especially for the journalists working in the media holdings, because we have two or three of these that get the most profitable advertising contracts. This can be illustrated on the example of an advertising contract entered with one of the telephone operators. The publication of an article representing the company in a bad light raises the chances of losing the advertising contract up to 99.9% and the journalist, who made such information public, is likely to remain out of work.
 
Pressures come from other companies as well, including the state-owned ones. Some information on the Air Moldova CEO wage was used by the administration to break the contract with the newspaper “Adevarul”. The harassment by courts is even worse.
 

By conducting a simple analysis of the media market, we could say that we have all the components of an economic press close to the international standards: we have a specialized TV channel, economic newspapers in Russian and Romanian, press agencies, websites, journalists' associations and even bloggers. But what do we still need? 

The main missing element seems to be a real market economy: with stock exchanges, capital market, thriving business, impressive deals, success stories, rankings, etc.  Without all this, what should we write about? About the fact that a minister participated in a series of negotiations on signing of an assistance agreement, some country gave us another $ 100 000, and the Government, during the last seven years, changed the VAT rate for eight times?
 
The economic press needs also good experts and reviewers able to provide plausible explanations of certain phenomena. For example, it is practically impossible to get a comment from a commercial bank specialist on the exchange rate fluctuations in the market.

 

But what the economic press needs the most is the investors. It needs business people who are willing to risk their money in order to support the press development. The presence of a western holding applying standards for the ones who create and consume information, would be very welcomed. And these standards shall include not only rules of conduct for journalists but also rules on who to play on the advertising market.
 
It is undisputed that the problems faced by the press will not disappear and the political and economic pressures will continue. Again, I go back to the news because of which the site was blocked, or rather not to the news, but to the quality of the audience that was so interested in it. Because, if we had an audience with greater demands, a more educated public who would be able to filter the channels they watch, the sites they visits, the subscriptions they make, and all the horrors and terrible news broadcast by local and international TV channels, then maybe the Moldovan media, including the economic one, would be different.
 
 

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The article was published within the Advocacy Campaigns Aimed at Improving Transparency of Media Ownership, Access to Information and promotion of EU values  and integration project, implemented by the IJC, which is, in its turn, part of the Moldova Partnerships for Sustainable Civil Society project, implemented by FHI 360.
 
This article is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The content are the responsibility of author and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.