PresidentialElection2025/ Murphy (OSCE/ODIHR): Own assessments of election campaign coverage in media and online

  Head of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) observation mission to Romania, Eoghan Murphy, told a press conference on Tuesday that his team will make "its own assessments of the media and online coverage" of the campaign for the May presidential elections.The observers will meet with all the parties involved and we will make our own assessments of the media and online coverage. According to these observations and those of the stakeholders, political parties and other political bodies, we will have our own assessment, Eoghan Murphy said.In the event of a second round, he said, the OSCE team would monitor this electoral process, as well.We are here to observe the elections and not to comment on previous elections, which we did not observe, commented Murphy.Moreover, the head of the mission said there are experts looking at how the election campaign is being conducted online, with "concerns" about disinformation and manipulation in the media.We are aware of what happened in the previous [presidential, editor's note] elections. We followed the situation, even if we were not observers then. In general I can say that I had concerns about disinformation or manipulation, especially online. We had these concerns in many of the OSCE states during the recent elections there. It is becoming an increasingly predominant part of our work, so we are assessing new laws and the impact of their implementation and broadening the framework of our work, the official said.He explained that the observation mission includes media monitoring, but also an assessment of how the election campaign is taking place online and how social media is being used in the elections.In terms of online campaign observation, we assess how the state is prepared to detect and deal with manipulative content and disinformation in the election campaign and when such cases arise, we analyze the handling of such situations, the OSCE representative added.At the same time, the OSCE is paying attention to cooperation with social media platforms, the authorities' access to these platforms, their ability to get the necessary information from these platforms and the way these online platforms respond to the authorities' requests will be assessed, Eoghan Murphy said.The role of an observation mission, he emphasized, is not to supervise or intervene and the assessments will be published in reports. A preliminary report will be published two weeks before the elections, and a press conference will be held on May 5, the day after the first round of the presidential election, during which the preliminary findings will be presented.Elections are a long-term process, not a one-day event, he emphasized.The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) opened on Tuesday an observation mission of Romania's presidential elections in May, following an official invitation from the national authorities.The mission includes 13 experts from 11 OSCE states, who are present at the office organized in Bucharest. They include experts on legislation, media and campaign financing. They will also travel around the country. They will be joined next week by 22 long-term observers. They will observe the electoral process at regional level.Eoghan Murphy said that so far his team has had meetings with representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) and the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP).The campaign for the presidential election begins on April 4 and ends on May 3 at 07:00.The first round of the elections will take place on May 4, and the second - on May 18.