Claims Filed by Canal 2 and Canal 3 Channels against the Sanctions Imposed by the BC in 2022 Are Rejected by the Court

The magistrates of the Chisinau Court, Riscani District, recently rejected as ungrounded the complaints filed by Canal 2 and Canal 3 channels against the decision of the Broadcasting Council (BC) according to which the TV channels requested to cancel the fines totaling 10000 and 15000 lei, respectively, for non-compliance with the legal provisions on broadcasting scenes of violence and their technical processing. The media service providers’ complaints concern a decision dated January 2022, when the authority fined six TV channels 90000 lei.

The decision to sanction TV6, ProTV Chișinău, Canal 2, Canal 3, Prime, and Publika TV was taken during the BC meeting held on January 26 last year, in the context of the suggestion made by the BC member Ruslan Mihalevschi to monitor ex officio the national media service providers’ materials on the topic related to the violent actions which had taken place in a nightclub in Chisinau and involved a vlogger from the Republic of Moldova.

The authority identified a series of breaches related to the requirements for repeatedly broadcasting audiovisual content which depicts scenes of physical, mental, or language violence. Therefore, the channels which had committed these breaches were fined 10000-15000 lei.

During the examination of the breaches, Liliana Vițu, BC president, mentioned that such topics should not be ignored, but on the contrary, they needed to be covered in an even more complex manner, but high-quality technical processing was supposed to be applied to blur the image and the sound if the topics had provocative content.

The decision of Chisinau Court rejecting the appeal of the Canal 2 and Canal 3 channels against the fines imposed by the BC can be appealed against at Chisinau Court of Appeal.