The communiqués issued by the police and the Prosecutor General’s Office are the main source of information about trafficking in human beings and domestic violence. The press reporters and editors practically do not look for additional information and do not verify the facts, presenting only the viewpoints of the representatives of the law enforcement bodies, not yet of the victims and suspects, shows a monitoring report made public in a meeting of the Investigative Journalists Club, Info-Prim Neo reports. From September 1, 2010 until August 31, 2011, there were monitored 19 national and local newspapers. In the period they published over 700 articles about migration, domestic violence and human trafficking. “The number of articles was on the rise, but every second material was a news story. Most of the articles lacked professionals’ comments on the cases and phenomenon in general. They did not give a clear picture of the size of these phenomena in Moldova,” said Natalia Porubin, editor-coordinator at the Journalistic Investigations Center (CIN). The monitoring showed that some of the media outlets use inappropriate terms to describe the victims of human trafficking and domestic violence. In some of the cases, the journalists reveal the identity of the victims and suspects. Almost 60% of the materials are based on one source of information. “Journalists phone me and tell me that they want to interview and film the victims as they want to find out details about their life. I thus experience a stupid situation. I work every day to help the persons who were abused or trafficked to rehabilitate themselves and then I’m requested to ask them to tell publicly what they went through,” said Lilia Gorceag, psychologist of the Center of Assistance and Protection for Victims of Human Trafficking and Potential Victims. The report contains recommendations for the journalists writing about trafficking in human beings, migration and domestic violence. They are recommended to avoid using words classifying the victims, like ‘prostitute’, and providing details about the life of the victim and the suspect, to respect the principle of presumption of innocence and to consult the law enforcement bodies when they conduct an investigation in parallel so as not to affect the inquiry and the potential victims. The mass media monitoring report was produced by the Journalistic Investigations Center with support from the International Organization for Migration within a partnership program involving the mass media, civil society and public institutions.