"Priest pilgrimages" in some Moldovan media outlets: one-sided approach, speculation, and misinformation narratives
In Moldova, political power is separated from the church, which means that the clergy are not allowed to get involved in the country’s political life. However, just before the presidential elections and the republican constitution referendum of October 20, 2024, several members of the church were involved in actions supporting and promoting electoral candidates, as well as spreading fake news and narratives discrediting the European Union and the referendum. The involvement of cult representatives in the political campaign in August-October 2024 was covered differently by Moldovan media outlets.
Foto: Deschide.md
Several media outlets (such as Deschide.md, TVR Moldova, Ziarul de Gardă, TV8, Newsmaker.md, Nordnews.md, Radio Free Europe, etc.) published journalistic investigations and materials supported with firsthand photos and video footage covering "free pilgrimages" organized for hundreds of priests and parishioners of the Moldovan Orthodox Church (part of the Russian Orthodox Church) with the alleged purpose of training them "to propagandize against Maia Sandu and the constitution referendum". In return, they were allegedly promised to receive on their return "gifts and MIR cards to which they would get money for the needs of their churches".
In contrast, the subject of priests departing to Moscow and the purpose of that trip was either overlooked by the pro-Russian press or covered in a one-sided manner. Instead, some of these sources were very enthusiastic about passing on the speculation that arose following an MP’s statement that the Orthodox Church subordinated to Moscow would be banned in Moldova, although the authorities have repeatedly denied this.
INVESTIGATIONS WITH EVIDENCE AND SOURCES
On August 19, 2024, Deschide.md published an investigation reporting that several trips of the Metropolis of Moldova's priests to Russia had been planned for August-September 2024 and funded by the fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor with the support of the Moscow Patriarchate. A total of more than 120 clergymen were supposed to take part in the "pilgrimages" to Moscow, a figure that later, according to various materials published over two months, rose to 300, 500 and even 900 clergymen and parishioners of the Moldovan Orthodox Church.
The investigation was quickly picked up by a number of national and local media outlets, some of which went on to document the story. For instance, Ziarul de Gardă presented the first reactions of church leaders and published images capturing the Metropolis of Moldova’s priests on the day of their departure at Chisinau International Airport. Although those concerned did not want to say anything about the much-discussed pilgrimages, Ioan Moșneguțu, vicar of the Metropolis of Chisinau and All Moldova, confirmed for ZdG "that several priests from Moldova are go on pilgrimages to the Russian Federation, but he says that these are not organized by the Metropolis of Moldova and that he does not know who organizes and funds them ". Representatives of the "Victorie" party led by Ilan Shor, who were targeted in the journalistic material, did not answer the journalists' calls to explain whether or not Ilan Shor was funding the priests' trips to Moscow.
Photo: TVR Moldova
Information accompanied by video footage showing the priests on the day of their departure in the hall of Chisinau Airport was also made public by TVR Moldova, which quotes three sources, including representatives of the Moldovan Metropolis and a political analyst, to clarify whether what was stated by Deschide.md in its investigation is true information.
On September 5, 2024, the NordNews editorial staff came into possession of photos showing some of the priests on holy pilgrimages dressed in civilian clothes, in a relaxing setting, with mugs of beer. The portal published the article "Holy places" in Moscow where Moldovan priests go on pilgrimage in which it mentions that "though gone for exclusively religious activities in holy places, as was stated in the press release published on the Metropolis's website, priests from Ungheni and Nisporeni episcopates have confused holy places with Moscow beer halls". On September 25, the portal's reporters covered another case in which Marchel, Bishop of Balti and Falesti, openly engaged in election campaigning for presidential candidate Victoria Furtuna, and Pavel Petrov, a priest in the Church of St. Martyr Mina in Balti, in his sermon on September 21, did anti-EU propaganda. The portal's website published videos confirming the clergymen’s involvement in the election campaign.
Photo: NordNews.md
ONE-SIDED APPROACH, SPECULATION AND MISINFORMATION
While the pilgrimages of the Metropolis of Moldova’s priests were covered by a large number of media outlets, sources with a pro-Russian editorial policy preferred to overlook them (Gagauzmedia.md), cover them without any journalistic effort while using press releases issued by the Russian Patriarchate (Kp.media) or present the facts selectively and speculatively (Evedomosti.md).
The site Kp.media (Komsomolskaya Pravda) stayed away from the subject, but on October 2 published a press release issued by Patriarchia.ru, informing that Vladimir, Metropolitan of Chisinau and All Moldova, participated in a pilgrimage to the holy sites of Russia. The source made no reference to the subject of controversial pilgrimages, which has been covered by several editorial offices for two months.
Evedomosti.md (Moldavskie Vedomosti) also showed no interest in finding out whether the information about the alleged pilgrimages of Moldovan clerics for electoral purposes is true. Most of the published materials quoted Vasile Soimaru, member of the Action and Solidarity Party (PAS), who said in a TV program that "there will come a time when Moldova, like Ukraine, will disown the Moldovan Metropolis which in fact belongs to Russia".
Even though PAS later announced that this was Vasile Soimaru’s personal opinion which does not reflect the party's position, and President Maia Sandu denied the statement, saying that there was no threat to the Moldovan Metropolitan Church or the Metropolitan Church of Bessarabia, Vasile Soimaru’s statement was quoted in six of the nine press materials on the subject. These texts rely on experts and politicians who speculate on that fake (e.g. "Dodon: Banning the Moldovan Orthodox Church by the UOC example will divide the country" / Додон: Запрет православной церкви Молдовы по примеру УПЦ расколет страну, "Are there plans to liquidate the Moldovan Metropolis?" / Так есть ли планы по ликвидации Молдавской митрополии?).
Using the statement made by Soimaru, the editors resorted to mixing facts and opinions, as well as generalizing and interpreting facts. Thus, while announcing that "the press service of Maia Sandu's party (PAS, editor's note) denied the information about the plans to liquidate the Moldovan Metropolis", the media outlet writes in the same paragraph that "at the moment, the country is preparing for the oncoming elections, and such a decision would only cause the current president of the Republic of Moldova to lose votes. But this does not mean that there are no such plans and that, in case of their victory, Maia Sandu's team will not start to implement this plan".
Another example of fact interpretation can be found in the article "Metropolitan Vladimir outraged by the persecution of priests" (in Russian: Митрополит Владимир возмущен преследованием священников) where, in connection with the same statement made by Soimaru, the media outlet writes that "the president denied Soimaru's statement, but nobody believes her".
Interpretations, labeling and mixing of facts and opinions are also found in another opinion piece – "Will the Moldovan Orthodox Church go through the Ukrainian scenario?" (Ждет ли Православную Церковь Молдовы украинский сценарий?). As a reaction to Soimaru’s statement, the article presents the comments of politicians Vladimir Voronin and Igor Dodon who mention that such an action "will provoke a dangerous round of confrontation in the society which is already divided by the authorities", as well as personal opinions of the article’s author which cause panic, fear and hatred. At the same time, it contains allegations about the existence of a massive anti-church campaign, with compromising evidence and accusations against the priests of the Moldovan Orthodox Church. "We should not forget that in West-controlled countries, any action of the authorities against the Church, be it in Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania or Moldova, is in one way or another part of a common Washington-coordinated strategy to 'split' the Russian Orthodox Church which continues to have canonical responsibility for the Orthodox faith", the text insinuates, among other things.
In this line of thought, the outlet also published during the reference period a report on the Estonian Parliament which has given the Orthodox Church the status of "supporter of military aggression", as well as the Russian Orthodox Church's press release on Metropolitan Vladimir's pilgrimage to the holy sites of Russia.
Media expert: Professionally written news has neutral language and presents the position of all relevant parties
With reference to the way various media outlets chose to serve the subject of Moscow pilgrimages to the public opinion, Viorica Zaharia, media expert, points out that, as in other cases, when a topic does not favor one side it is presented as veiled as possible. From this we understand why "the aim of some media outlets was not to inform the public but to re-circulate a disinformation narrative with all its derivatives – that there’s nothing sacred with the current government, that it promotes values other than those of faith, that it has dictatorial tendencies, etc."
"Omission – both the omission of relevant news from the media agenda and the omission of relevant details from an article or news story (which changes its meaning) – is one of the most commonly used techniques of information manipulation. We are referring to a selection of facts according to certain purposes. This has, of course, nothing to do with the professional journalism practices or the mission of the press to serve the public interest. Unfortunately, if a site only publishes the Metropolis's press release saying that the priests went on an "innocent" pilgrimage to Moscow, a consumer who does not read anything else has no way of knowing that there are other sides to the subject", Viorica Zaharia reiterated.
The expert's recommendation to journalists would be to inform themselves as much as possible, not just from one source. Also, it is to "avoid nuanced reporting using judgmental and aggressive expressions. News that truly informs uses a neutral language and presents the position of all relevant parties, as required by the Code of Ethics", warns Viorica Zaharia.
COMMENTS WITH VIOLATIONS
The Independent Journalism Center was monitoring two news portals (Unimedia.info and Stiri.md) that published articles on the pilgrimages of the Metropolis of Moldova priests in August-October and revealed that the facts depicted by journalists caused quite a negative reaction with the public. According to Zinaida Savenco who was in charge of monitoring, Unimedia.info published four articles during the reporting period, which gathered 105 messages from readers in the comments section. Most of these included offensive content, indecent vocabulary, labels and stereotyping of church representatives. Message authors blamed priests who allegedly accepted to serve Moscow, calling for "their Moldovan citizenship to be revoked". From what has been observed, the media outlet is trying to moderate the comments, some of which have been removed from the website on the grounds that they violate the portal's internal rules: "This post violates our policy".
In this context, following a complaint submitted by the CJI to the editorial staff, Unimedia.info published a note informing that, "according to the law, we must censor comments that incite hatred, attack a person or contain uncensored words. We urge you to have decent discussions!".
The news aggregator Stiri.md published seven articles on the topic in question during the same period, with a total of 161 comments. Even though the preamble to the comments section states that "editors are not responsible for the opinions of readers. Speak freely, but be polite and follow the rules", the comments are full of jargon, licentious language and hate speech, which means that the editorial staff is not concerned with moderation.
Content moderation is crucial for editorial teams to ensure that media platforms are not used as a means of spreading discriminatory rhetoric. This is also noted by media consumers who, in a comment on Stiri.md, addressed the editorial team with a request "to remove messages that violate the rules, contain insults and jargons". "Why are these people not fined, since most of their messages contain insults and violate the regulation?", the reader's post says.
Media representatives should obey these principles and actively monitor public comments and reactions to prevent any form of discrimination from spreading on their platforms. According to the Journalist's Code of Ethics, "in managing their websites and social media pages, media outlets shall not allow or accept any deviations from the legal and ethical rules in reactions (comments) from the public".
This material was developed as part of the "Get the Trolls Out!" project, the fifth phase of a program to encourage young people to fight against religious discrimination and intolerance in Europe. Withing this project, the IJC has the task of monitoring the way several media outlets reflect religious topics.
Article in Romanian here.
