At This Holiday Time : Remember The Little Ones

Michael Hedges December 21, 2006

A country’s “best” radio station is taken off the air. The West protests. The government shrugs. The story repeats.

Gently tucked between Ukraine and Romania is Moldova: small and often forgotten in Eastern Europe. Over the weekend Antena-C fell silent due to what authorities called a technical problem.  Then there was the “bomb threat.”

Police arrived at Antena-C and cleared the offices and studios because of a bomb threat, after which the doors were sealed.  Staff gathered on the street in front of Antena-C’s building. The police commissioner called it an unauthorized demonstration.

Organization for Security and Cooperation Europe (OSCE) head of mission in Moldova Louis O’Neill observed that “neither ambulances, bomb detection units nor any other special precautionary measures which one might expect in the case of a bomb alarm” were visible at the scene.

Antena-C staff – literally and figuratively out in the cold – called for an Open House, inviting members of the public to visit the station over the weekend. The newly appointed manager Sandu Sitnic called that off, citing fears that the public would steal things.

Journalists’ Union president Valeriu Saharneanu told Info Prim Neo that the “bomb trick” was also used in 2004 to vacate Teleradio Moldova. And closure is not new to Antena-C and Euro TV. Both were closed, briefly, in 2004, leading to a hunger strike among journalists.

Chisinau municipal authorities put the broadcasting licenses of Antena-C and Euro TV Chisinau up for tender last week (December 14) and moved to dismiss company directors. The Chisinau Municipal Council (CMC) has owned both broadcast outlets.

Under a decision handed down in November, the stations would be privatized by auction. All of that came about after the Moldovan Parliament changed, and quickly passed, amended media rules in August, effectively transferring ownership from the CMC to the state broadcaster Teleradio Moldova. The intention, according to Parliamentary Deputy and Teleradio Moldova journalist Angela Arama, writing the new Audiovisual Code, has been to create a single State broadcaster because “local budgets cannot afford a TV or radio station.”

The Moldovan Audiovisual Coordinating Council (CCA) president Ion Mihailo admitted at the time (May) that such privatizations of municipally owned broadcasters had never been done and that the broadcast frequencies could not be privatized as they belonged to the State and the licenses could not be transferred to anybody else. The CCA monitors both privately owned and State owned radio and TV stations.

Antena-C director Vasile State, now dismissed, knew something was amiss when all of the station’s four transmitters failed at the same time. He also dismissed the argument that money is the issue.

Radiocumunicatti technical manager Veaceslav Pascal told inquiring Antena-C staff members Saturday (December 16) that the Israeli-made digital to analogue converter was out of order and could only be fixed in Israel. That, he said, would take ten days, at least.

International media-watchers, including the Council of Europe (CoE) and OSCE, commended both Antena-C and Euro TV for balanced news coverage of elections and local issues.  The CCA issued a statement accusing both Antenna-C and Euro TV of failing to adhere to the “principles of pluralism.” A CoE source called the CCA’s action “really outrageous.”

Timing, of course, is everything. Shutting down Moldova’s Antenna-C and Euro TV happened just as an international conference on media, attended by influential European media regulators, concluded in Chisinau. This is not all that dissimilar – in more ways than one – from the week last month when the Azeri government shut down independent broadcaster ANS, inconveniently coincident with a state visit to the United States by Azeri First Lady Mrs. Mehriban Aliyeva. Knowledgeable sources say Mrs. Aliyeva received an “ear-full” at the US State Department about the ANS shutdown.

Antena-C and Euro TV staff and supporters have organized an “authorized” demonstration for Saturday, December 23.

ftm acknowledges details provided by three anonymousMedia Sleuths.

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