IJC Monitoring Report: Reflecting Minorities and Diversity in the Media

The media in the Republic of Moldova do not pay enough attention to topics concerning minorities and diversity. Generally, this subject has coverage in the news, but is not addressed thoroughly, in detail and multilaterally so that the representatives of the majority could be informed and understand better the minority groups – this is one of the conclusions of the ‘Reflecting Minorities and Diversity in the Media’ Monitoring Report, published by the Independent Journalism Center.
 
The goal of the monitoring conducted from 7 May to 7 June 2019 was to determine how the media in the Republic of Moldova reflects issues related to ethnic minorities and other groups vulnerable to hate speech, by assessing the media content and comments made under the materials by the users of news portals.

In total, ten media outlets were monitored: three TV channels (Moldova 1, Pro TV, Publika TV - the main newscasts) and seven online portals (Unimedia.info, Jurnal.md, Deschide.md, Noi.md, Newsmaker.md, Kp.md, Sputnik.md). The TV channels were selected according to the form of ownership – public and private, the coverage – national and regional, TV channel audience and the web page where the television materials are shared. National online portals in Romanian and Russian were also selected on the basis of several criteria: broadcasting of news and other informative content; placing of informative content every day; providing users with a comments area.
 
All materials and comments referring to ethnic groups representatives and other groups vulnerable to discrimination and hate speech were analyzed: refugees/migrants, sexual minorities, people with physical and psychosocial disabilities. The materials related to topics from Gagauz Yeri ATU and the Transnistrian region were also analyzed.
 
Several recommendations were included in the report. One of them was that the media should include in their agenda original topics on diversity, minorities and human rights. The topics should be addressed thoroughly, providing the public with as much information as possible about the subject. At the same time, the broadcasting regulatory authority should constantly monitor how minorities and human rights are observed by broadcasters, encourage them to observe both the Code of Ethics and the Audiovisual Media Services Code.
 
The report was developed with the OSCE Mission’s financial support. This support does not provide the Mission's approval of the content, graphic presentation or manner of displaying the information and of opinions in the publication.