edition-dw-akademie-in-the-service-of-the-public-functions-and-transformation-of-media-in-developing-countries-pdf

tion with Moldova 1 makes him a director very dedicated to thechannel and therefore much interested in improving Moldova1’s programming. On the other hand, Moldovan media expertsclaim, he is opposed to drastic institutional reform that wouldinvolve laying off staff (most of whom he has worked with foralmost 30 years). To DW Akademie Surdu stated several timesto be urging laying off old staff and employing new young peoplebut lacking administrative support. 35 In contrast, structuralreforms could be implemented much more rigidly in the radiodepartment, as Alexandru Dorogan served his whole fiveyearterm as director of radio broadcasting, according to TRMmanagement. DW Akademie project manager, Filip Slavkovic,states that Radio Moldova has changed the name of its flagshipnews program to Actualități and introduced youth radio Tineret,first just online and then on-air too (although only in aboutone third of the country, covering only about one fourth of thepopulation, notably not the capital Chişinău, but the town ofBălți), and the online radio Muzical. According to Slavkovic, inActualități, though, little changes in the program have beenmade (daily shifts have been partly introduced). New job positions(for example, producer) have been introduced on paperbut not in practice. While older employees have retired, newreporters and editors have been employed, so that overallthe number of staff remained the same – making a more efficientproduction not possible, since its costs remained high,Slavkovic criticizes.TRM endorsed a code of ethics in 2007. The 59-page documentcovers all important aspects of journalistic ethics, fromaccuracy and impartiality to the question of how to coverelection campaigns and how to deal with sources, the right toprivacy of crime victims and methods for gathering information.36 However, the code was adopted at a time when TRM actedas the government’s most important propaganda tool, thusviolating principles of impartiality and pluralism of opinion,stipulated in the code, on a regular basis. In 2013, the Councilof Observers approved a new statute which states impartiality,editorial independence, and political pluralism among thecompany’s mission goals, principles, and values. 37Capacity Building and Human ResourcesHuman resource management is probably the single mostpressing problem of Teleradio-Moldova. The company’s originsdate back to Soviet times and the human resource policyof that time has survived the fall of the Soviet Union bymore than 20 years. In April 2014, TRM employed 794 peopleto broadcast one TV program (347 employees) and three radioprograms (268 employees). The multimedia department had18 people on its payroll, general services 161. 38 At the beginningof the reform process, TRM employed a workforce of roughly1000 people. A large part of TRM’s employees started workingfor the company before 1991.Most independent experts estimate that the broadcastercould do without a third to a half of its staff. 39, 40 A substantialnumber of them were not only trained in Soviet times, mostthem have also seen many presidents and directors comingand going as well as editorial policies changing. It is, therefore,a major challenge to motivate these employees to help transformthe old (post-)Soviet radio and TV station into a genuinepublic broadcaster. Furthermore, it is obvious that not all employeesof TRM have the commitment and the skills requiredfor the task.When the new management took over, it was decidedto reduce the number of staff in order to free resources. Thefreed financial means were to be used to improve TRM’s programming.However, the management claims that Moldovanlabour laws make it almost impossible to lay off staff. Severalmedia experts, interviewed for this study, think that this is afalse pretence.In 2010, TRM started to reform its salary system. Accordingto Soviet tradition, journalists used to receive a rather low basicmonthly salary. In addition, every single report made by a journalistwould raise the employee’s salary by a fixed amount. Thissystem rewarded quantity instead of quality as it did not provideincentives for high quality output. Its reform was deemedto be crucial to the success of the reform process at TRM.The Soros Foundation issued a grant in 2011 for an expertto work out a system to monitor the performance of TRMstaff over the course of six months. The aim was to establisha constant monitoring mechanism to evaluate the quality ofwork. The supervision system would have shown clearly whichmembers of staff were able to fulfill their tasks according totheir job description and who was unable to cope. This systemwould have led to layoffs. With close monitoring of performance,workers’ insufficiencies could have been documented.In addition, these records could have been used in eventualcourt cases to justify the layoffs. 41 However, TRM’s managementdismissed the proposed system, saying that they lackedthe human resources to implement it. 42Instead, the TRM management decided to put a bonus systemin place, in which a basic salary is combined with bonusesaccording to the performance of the staff. In the words of aTRM executive, the reform process has been “painful” but hasmade some progress – even if only very slow. This process wasalso delayed several times. The Electronic Press Association(APEL) received a grant from the Soros Foundation Moldovato monitor the process closely. Four years after the processstarted, only Radio Actualităţi and the TV department Știri şiDezbateri (News and Debates) had implemented the new salarysystem. 43 40 percent of employees were working in linewith the new bonus system by spring 2014. 44In its report, APEL states that the staff has a very criticalview of the way this process has been handled so far. APELpoints out that “the leadership of TRM did not sanction thoseresponsible for exceeding the time-limits and the non-executionof the orders.” 45 The report also finds that the methodsof performance evaluation need to be simplified, and that theimplementation of the new system was incomplete in the TVdepartment. This illustrates yet again how crucial a function-126