Dodon’s television will broadcast the “castrated” Russian First Channel
The Audiovisual Council of Moldova approved today the request of the Accent TV channel to change its name to “Primul în Moldova” (“First in Moldova”) on the grounds that it received a contract to rebroadcast the Russian “First Channel”.
This was reported by the Point website, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Currently, the content of Channel One is broadcast in Moldova by the Prime TV channel, owned by oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc, who fled the country. The head of the licensing and authorization department, Nikolay Dastic, said that he asked the Prime television company for information in the contract concluded with the Russian television channel, but received no response. He noted that the contracts of both Moldovan channels are not exclusive, which means that both, hypothetically, can broadcast this content.
It should be noted that on February 12, 2018, a law came into force in Moldova, according to which the broadcast of information, analytical, news and military programs of television channels belonging to countries that have not ratified the European Convention on Transfrontier Television is prohibited. Russian TV channels fell under this restriction.
The country's President Igor Dodon refused to veto this discriminatory law in order to maintain a coalition with the pro-European ACUM bloc, whose leader, Prime Minister Maia Sandu, has repeatedly stated that Moldova must continue to “fight Russian propaganda.”
Also, according to the law, at least 50% of the content of Moldovan TV channels must be from member states of the European Union and/or from third parties participating in the European Convention on Transfrontier Television. According to Accent director Stanislav Vyzhga, he is negotiating with agents from European countries on this matter, and that Channel One already has several contracts in this regard.
The television channel Accent TV is associated with the media structure of Vadim Chubar, owner of Media Invest Service, affiliated with the President of Moldova Igor Dodon. The holding, whose owner is called “Dodon’s shadow adviser” by the Moldovan media, also includes the NTV-Moldova television channel, the newspapers “Socialists” and “Arguments and Facts in Moldova”, “Komsomolskaya Pravda in Moldova”, electronic publications “Notebook - Moldova”, Actualități, “Voice”, “Vesti.md”, noi.md, vedomosti.md.
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