Moldovan parliament discusses combating of misinformation

Chisinau, 7 April /MOLDPRES/ - The draft law which provides for the imposing of new measures as to the counteracting of the phenomenon of spread of misinformation was approved by the parliament in the first reading today. The opposition did not back the draft and blocked the parliament’s rostrum.   

The draft sees the making of amendments to the Law on the Intelligence and Security Service of Moldova, law on the freedom of expression, law on electronic communications, the code of audiovisual media services, Criminal Code, Contravention Code, law on the regime of state of emergency, siege and war.   

The new law proposes the defining of the notions of media information space, public information space, forged information, information which affects the security of the public information space and misinformation.  

The draft also establishes that the misinformation and/or the spread of the information which hit the security of the public information space will be banned. The document establishes also criminal and contravention sanctions for the non-fulfillment of the instructions by the Commission for Emergency Situations or the decisions of the Supreme Security Council.  

The new amendments to the Code of audiovisual media services also see that the providers of audiovisual media services will not spread and the distributors of the audiovisual media services will not rebroadcast audiovisual programmes which were initially produced in states which had not ratified the European Convention on Transfrontier Television. Exceptions will represent feature films, short films and the entertainment programmes which do not have military content, as well as the audiovisual programmes which are produced in the member states of the European Union, the United States and Canada, as well as in the states which ratified the European Convention on Transfrontier Television.   

The document also stipulates the establishment of new powers for the Intelligence and Security Service, aimed at discovering, preventing and counteracting the actions which represent threats to the information security. The initiative also suggests that the private people and legal entities who own webpages will be obliged to place contact information on a visible place, which would allow their identification.    

Photo: Parliament