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The new draft law which includes a series of amendments to the Broadcasting Media Service Code is signed by the Socialist deputies Vasile Bolea, Bogdan Tirdea, and Adrian Lebedinschi, the latter being the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Media Issues.
The document provides for reformulating the paragraph that currently allows only broadcasting TV and radio programs with informative, info-analytic, military, and political content produced in the Member States of the European Union, the USA, and Canada, as well as in the states which have ratified the European Convention on Transfrontier Television. The Russian Federation is one of the countries that have signed this convention but not ratified it yet.
However, the parliamentarians suggest amending the provision, allowing the programs from the Russian Federation and other countries as follows, “In order to protect the national broadcasting space and ensure information security, media service providers and media distributors shall be entitled to include in the service offer broadcasting TV and radio programs with military content, local or purchased from third countries, which conform to the provisions of the concept and the Information Security Strategy of the Republic of Moldova.”
Neither the provisions known as the “anti-propaganda law” nor the Socialists’ suggestions explicitly mention that the law actually targets media content from the Russian Federation. During the 2017 debates, the Democratic Party deputies acknowledged that the “anti-propaganda law” had been especially drafted against Russia. The Socialists have previously promised, including in their party-level programs, to annul the so-called “anti-propaganda law” as breaching the citizens’ rights to information.
“RETURNING PROPAGANDA’ AS THE MAIN MISSION
Media researcher Victor Gotisan qualifies the suggestion as “dangerous” because the authors, in his opinion, intend to bring back "”the propaganda of the Kremlin administration to Moldova.” This law suggestion is dangerous, in my opinion, especially because, under the guise of a fundamental right – the right to information – it is intended to return and actually legitimate the Kremlin propaganda produced by Russian media institutions broadcast in the territory of the Republic of Moldova by a certain NTV Moldova or a certain Primul in Moldova,” Victor Gotisan explains.
According to him, the other amendments are included in the draft law “only formally, and aim to camouflage the proposed amendment” to the article on protecting the national broadcasting sphere. He also considers that adopting this provision would, above all, increase the level of external propaganda and disinformation. “Secondly, there is a real threat to the local media producing local content, for the simple reason that they will find it even more difficult to compete with the content produced by the Russian media. It will have a direct impact on the audience and extend to the amount of advertising,” Gotisan adds.
Who would benefit from adopting this initiative? "The answer is simple: not the citizens, but exclusively the media institutions controlled by the PSRM which parasitize on such content and will cover their broadcasting schedule in this manner,” Victor Gotisan considers.
Nicolae Tibrigan, an expert in the Laboratory of Information Warfare and Strategic Communication Analysis (LIWSCA), considers that an “anti-propaganda law” is welcome in the Republic of Moldova and would be useful, especially in the context of “information aggression from the East”, though the effects of the law are actually below expectations.
“You cannot protect the country’s information security by ‘retransmitting TV and radio programs with military content’ from any other states. The entire geopolitical and foreign policy agenda of the Republic of Moldova is informationally predominated by the Russian Federation. In fact, regardless of the 2018 anti-propaganda law, Moscow keeps maintaining its influence and altering decisions in the state via the parties, influencers, or pro-Russian leaders,” Tibrigan mentions.
The expert foresees essential risks for information security in case of adopting such suggestions, and this also due to the fact that the resilience of the Moldovan society “in the face of propaganda discourse is at extremely low levels.” He provides an example of the survey conducted by CBS-Axis commissioned by WatchDog in May 2020, according to which the share of respondents believing in various conspiracy theories reached 50.4%. “Behavioral psychology studies have demonstrated that persons who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to believe in other pseudo-scientific and propaganda narratives. (...) If the new suggestions from the Socialists are adopted, we could expect a devastating effect on the media,” he concluded.
WHAT ARE THE ODDS THAT THIS LAW IS ADOPTED?
The Romanian expert believes that the PSRM has the necessary votes to pass these suggestions in two readings. “And these votes cannot come from the Democratic Party, as the anti-propaganda law was their own initiative and was adopted as a result of some backstage agreements between Vladimir Plahotniuc and Igor Dodon, the latter being suspended for several days just to be publicly justified that he had nothing to do with it. Even the then Prime Minister, Pavel Filip, directly accused Russia of ‘intervening and supporting pro-Russian parties in the Republic of Moldova, including via its information channels’. (...) In fact, this suggestion could serve as the birth certificate for the new oligarchic parliamentary majority of the PSRM and Sor,” Nicolae Tibrigan is convinced.
Victor Gotisan expresses his hope that adopting the initiative will lack votes due to the “absence of any benefits it could bring to the media sector,” but he does not rule out that the project could be voted by a possible alliance between the PSRM and “Pentru Moldova” Platform in the Parliament. “If this law is still voted, that will convince me once again that we live in a country of the absurd. We are likely to witness the situation when those who drafted the “anti-propaganda law” and insisted on adopting it in 2017 – I am referring here to Sergiu Sirbu and his colleagues who used to be in the DPM and currently are in “Pentru Moldova” Platform – will have to vote for annulling the same law three years later,” Victor Gotisan concludes.
The acting President Igor Dodon has twice refused to promulgate the so-called “anti-propaganda law.” Instead of him, the promulgation decree was signed by the then head of the legislature, Andrian Candu, following a decision of the Constitutional Court which vested him with that right.
Earlier, the Ambassador of Great Britain to Chisinau, Steven Fisher, in his interview for Media Azi, said that the annulment of the so-called “anti-propaganda law” would create difficulties, and mentioned that he believed that "such a scenario should be avoided.”
