The Broadcasting Coordination Council (BCC) is concerned about the fact that the Bashkan of Gagauzia Irina Vlah promulgated the local Broadcasting Law that was subject to harsh criticism by the Council and by representatives of civil society. The given law on television and radio contains a series of provisions that run counter to the Broadcasting Code and the national legislation. Therefore, the BCC members in a meeting on March 29 called upon the authorities not to allow the public broadcaster of Gagauzia to be subdued, IPN reports.

According to a press release of the authority, the BCC, as a guarantor of the public interest in broadcasting, will make an approach to the Bashkan and the People’s Assembly of Gagauzia and will ask them to obey the national and Community legislation on the functioning of a public broadcaster and the supervisory board. A similar request will be made to the parliamentary commission for culture, education, youth and the mass media so that this takes measures to prevent the violation of the journalists’ freedom of expression and the right of the people of Gagauzia to have an independent, impartial and democratic public broadcaster.

The State Chancellery will be repeatedly asked to challenge the Broadcasting Law of Gagauzia in court.

In the same meeting, the BCC decided to penalize Ren Moldova TV channel for violating the normative standards when producing the program “War secret” , which centered on the political situation in Moldova. The channel will be banned from broadcasting advertisements during 72 hours.

The Council also recommended the TV channels that retransmit news bulletins, talk-shows and other kinds of programs from Russia that contain biased and manipulating information in relation to Moldova to review or replace these with other programs and to ensure thus the public’s access to pluralistic, truthful, objective and neutral information.