The situation of the media in Moldova worsened last year. The country fell one spot in the rankings of the EaP countries by public policies in the mass media sector. Such findings are contained in the study “Media landscape for 2014” that was presented on February 20, IPN reports.

“The public policies in the mass media sector in 2014 remained stagnant, being influenced by a number of factors. First of all, 2014 was an electoral year and we witnessed almost complete lack of internal political pluralism. Since the start of 2014, we saw situations when the media outlets were directed from behind by the politicians who own them,” said the executive director of the Independent Press Association Petru Macovei.

No public policy document was adopted in the final reading last year, even if there were initiatives. The new Broadcasting Code was to be debated publicly in 2014, but this didn’t happen. There was discussed the possibility of creating a fund for supporting periodicals, but with no result.

2014 was marked by the events in Ukraine and the TV channels retransmitted from Russia in Moldova started a media war that affected the consumers in Moldova. A recent survey showed that 53% of the Moldovans consider Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine are correct.

The head of the Political and Economic Section of the EU Delegation to Moldova Wicher Slagter said concrete measures should be taken to ensure media ownership transparency and remove political influence on the media. The European Union hopes the new Broadcasting Code will be adopted as a matter of urgency.

Director of the newspaper “Ziarul de Garda” Alina Radu said that no journalists were arrested or convicted in 2014, but there were cases of ill-treatment of reporters. Another problem is the access to information about the property of government officials and prosecutors, which is provided incompletely and for money.

Media expert Ion Bunduchi said that nobody expected in 2014 that the mass media would be equitable and they weren’t. “There were a number of novelties such as the politicians’ invention to campaign through the commercial media outlets, while in the election campaign the journalists were zombied. We now have five TV channels with national coverage, four of which belong to one politician. These evidently praised their owner during the election campaign,” he stated.

The study “Media landscape for 2014” was carried out within the Monitoring Media Freedom in the Eastern Partnership Countries Project that is implemented by the Independent Journalism Center with the financial support of the EU.