Eleven members and representatives of journalistic self-regulatory bodies of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Bulgaria, and Romania are paying a fact-finding visit to Moldova. While in Chisinau, the experts took part in a meeting of the Press Council of Moldova, stating their opinions on the examined complaints.

In one of the complaints examined in the meeting, the editor of the Balti newspaper “SP” accuses the state news agency “Moldpres” of taking a number of articles from the paper’s website without permission. The decision adopted by the Press Council says that “Moldpres” repeatedly violated the deontological norms. The editor-in-chief of the news agency “Fena” from Bosnia and Herzegovina Faruk Boric said that plagiarism became a serious problem in his country, especially with the development of the online media, while the protection of copyright became an acute problem.

Another complaint was filed by the National Roma Center against the paper “Komsomolskaya Pravda v Moldove”. The center considers that the Romany people were discriminated in an article of the paper, which promoted stereotypes and incited interethnic hatred. Studying the article, the Press Council established that the paper violated the Journalist’s Deontological Code and will demand removing the article from the website and publishing a denial. Mihaela Danga, deputy head of the Center for Independent Journalism of Romania who forms part of the group of foreign experts visiting Moldova, said that not only the deontological norms, but also the antidiscrimination legislation were violated, stressing the complaints of the kind should be examined by the Antidiscrimination Council.

Drying the visit, the foreign experts had a meeting with MP Chiril Lucinschi, who heads the Parliament’s commission on culture, education, research, and the mass media, and discussed public policies on the mass media. They also met lecturers and students of the Journalism and Communication Sciences Faculty of the State University of Moldova and of the School of Advanced Journalism, and the chairman and several members of the Broadcasting Coordination Council.

The fact-finding visit forms part of the project “Responsibilities of the mass media: practices of journalistic self-regulation” that is implemented by the Association of Independent Press in the name of the Press Council of Moldova, with financial support from the East East Beyond Borders Program of Soros Foundation Moldova. The Press Council of Moldova was founded on October 1, 2009.