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AC has completed its analysis of election coverage: penalties totaling 68,000 lei, 6 warnings, and 4 public notifications

12 television stations were fined a total of 68,000 lei, six others were publicly warned, and four were notified of the need to comply with the law, i.e., they were asked to remedy the minor violations found by the AC within a set period. The decisions were taken by the Audiovisual Council (AC) on October 10, following the examination of the Final Report on the coverage of the parliamentary elections of September 28. The monitoring covered the entire election campaign period (August 29 – September 26), including the day of silence.

Thus, the TVC 21 television station was fined 20,000 lei, the Gagauzia TV channel of the regional public broadcaster GRT was fined 15,000 lei, and Jurnal TV was fined 10,000 lei. TVR Moldova was fined 5,000 lei, and RLive TV, Next TV, Exclusiv TV, Star TV, and Agro TV Moldova were each fined 1,000 lei. In addition, 1TV and One TV were fined 3,000 lei, and Canal Regional was fined 7,000 lei.

Pro TV Chișinău, Cinema1, 7TV, N4, Vocea Basarabiei TV, and TV9 received public warnings.

At the same time, TV8, TV Elita, Media TV, and Moldova 1 were notified to comply with the law, applicable until the next election campaign.

The sanctions were imposed for failure to comply with the principles of fairness, balance, and impartiality in covering the elections, as provided for in Article 89 of the Electoral Code. Previously, following the evaluation of four monitoring reports prepared by the AC during the election campaign, the television stations were not sanctioned under this article.

According to the AC’s monitoring reports, the most sanctioned audiovisual media service providers during the campaign were TVC 21 (53,000 lei), Jurnal TV (37,000 lei), GRT (32,000 lei), and Pro TV (23,000 lei), with the amounts representing the total fines imposed throughout the entire election period.

“It is clear that we are facing inequality in terms of offline media, i.e., traditional, linear television, compared to what is happening online. We have heard, and providers have rightly complained, about this inequality and lack of balance in the permissiveness with which some journalists and opinion makers have acted online, and they have not been sanctioned in any way, unlike television stations, which have been forced to comply with certain rules, sometimes perhaps too strict,” said Aneta Gonța, vice-president of the AC, at the meeting where the report was examined.

Orest Dabija, one of the AC members, noted the existence of two types of deviations in the coverage of the elections: “There were moderators who clearly supported pro-Russian narratives and there were moderators who supported anti-Russian narratives, so to speak, even if they were sometimes camouflaged. The second Achilles’ heel, in my opinion, is the advertising market. The overall picture is quite serious. Advertising has declined significantly, and I believe that for future elections, some providers will lose interest in organizing debates or election information programs. On the other hand, we see that there have been very few violations in the news, and that is laudable.”

Also during the meeting, board member Vasile Botnaru mentioned that media service providers must learn to work in conditions of real competition and equity.

“It is important for providers to finally learn to work in real conditions and with real competitors, and not to be discriminated against, not to be considered ‘ours’,” he said.

“Throughout the election period, we noticed that audiovisual media services complied with the requirements of the Audiovisual Media Services Code and the Electoral Code, as well as related regulations. I am referring to the CEC regulations. If, for example, in the previous election campaign in 2024, there were audiovisual media services that reflected only five or ten seconds of the electoral competitors’ activity and did not provide details about the voting options for the referendum, now the providers have presented more detailed information about the electoral competitors. I appreciate the fact that some providers covered the campaign in an unbiased and impartial manner,” said AC member Tatiana Crestenco, referring to the overall picture of election coverage.

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