Moldova 1 Loses a Lawsuit against the BC Regarding a Sanction for Failing to Indicate the Source of Video Images at the SCJ
The Supreme Court of Justice declared inadmissible the appeal filed by Teleradio-Moldova regarding the case initiated by the public company against the Broadcasting Council (BC) for the sanction applied during the November 2023 election campaign, when Moldova 1 was broadcasting images without indicating their source. The decision was announced on February 6 and is irrevocable.
The sanction in the amount of 5000 lei referred to in the litigation was applied by the BC in the context of monitoring the public TV channel on November 13-17, 2023, in the context of the local election campaign of November 5. The authority concluded that several news items broadcast by Moldova 1 were not accompanied by the source of the images, contrary to the provisions of the Code of Audiovisual Media Services, the Council specifies.
After TRM filed a complaint to the court, the magistrates of the court of original jurisdiction and those of the Court of Appeal rejected the claims. On February 6, 2024, the Supreme Court declared inadmissible the appeal filed by Teleradio Moldova against the decision of Chisinau Court of Appeal dated January 17, 2024, which rejected as unfounded the lawsuit regarding partial annulment of the BC decision dated November 24, 2023, filed by the national public media service provider.
The media institution was also sanctioned with a public warning for a similar breach pursuant to the BC decision dated November 3, 2023. The failure to indicate the source on the video images borrowed by Moldova 1 was also noted by the Independent Journalism Center, and regarded as the most frequent deviation from December 1 to 7, 2023. Virtually no foreign news items included the primary sources of the images broadcast, the authors of the monitoring report conclude.
