Prime TV, Publika TV, Canal 2, Canal 3 and CTC Mega – Publicly Warned for ‘Serious Slippages’ in the Election Campaign

At its meeting on 22 May the Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC) has publicly warned, by unanimous vote, Prime TV, Publika TV, Canal 2, Canal 3 and CTC Mega television broadcasters for the failure to maintain impartiality and political and social pluralism. 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.

Monitored channels declared that they would not cover the election campaign, however, the BCC Monitoring Report found that they 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.

According to the report, monitored TV channels violated paragraphs 2, 3 and 4(c) of Article 7 of the Broadcasting Code. According to paragraph 2 of Article 7, the broadcaster, when allocating airtime slots for one party or political movement to propagate their positions within the same program and at the same time, must also provide airtime to other parties and political movements, without unjustified delays and without favouring any particular party, regardless of the percentage of its parliamentary representation. Paragraph 3 of the same Article refers to the obligation of broadcasters to cover election campaigns in a truthful, balanced and impartial way, but paragraph 4(c) – to observance of the principle of information from several sources within broadcasters’ informative programs.

In the opinion of the BCC chairman, Dragos Vicol, the report observed ‘serious slippages’ in the presentation of electoral stakeholders by the monitored channels, whether this happened in a context of electoral coverage of events or in strictly informative context.

We recall that the broadcasting regulating authority was notified by BCC member Olga Gututui, as well as Civic Coalition for Free and Fair Elections, Working Group for Monitoring the Mass Media Behaviour during Elections, ‘WatchDog.md’ Civil Association, two electoral competitors (Valeriu Munteanu and Alexandr Rosco), and two citizens.  In particular, the signatories of the notifications requested the BCC to start monitoring Prime TV, Canal 2 and Publika TV channels in order to analyse how they comply with the legal provisions on fair coverage and on ensuring the plurality of opinions.