Corruption in Moldova will not disappear as long as the legislation allows of interpretations, in particular in the case of reporting income by public officials. The subject formed the key part of the first program in the series “Press of the Press”, recently launched by DTV channel and quoted by Info-Prim Neo. Speaking at the show, Anticorruption Alliance secretary Mircea Esanu said that today there's not a single person in Moldova to serve a jail term for not reporting incomes or for reporting inaccurate or incomplete tax information. The law also appears powerless in cases where public officials choose to withhold information about their real income or to report just their personal incomes, and not those of their families, as required by the law. According to Esanu, the international practice shows that income reports have become the key instrument in controlling public officials, an account of how their incomes change throughout their term in office. If tax forms were really truthful and, compulsorily, counterchecked by a relevant body, they could serve as a valuable indicator of a public official's career. “If they found 50 million lei to reconstruct a memorial, they could definitely find half of this sum to set up a functional body to check income reports”, says Esanu. He believes that government officials must make the information about their accounts held in domestic and foreign banks known to the general public. Some 60,000 officials and functionaries should be checked in connection with their incomes, Esanu thinks. Also a guest on “Press of the Press”, Cornelia Cozonac, the head of the Investigative Journalism Center, considers that the laws which are supposed to battle corruption have been conceived by officials who are not quite interested in having a working and unambiguous legislation in the field. Furthermore, the Central Commission for Income and Property Inspection (CCCVP) is doing a superficial job of checking income reports submitted by government officials, taking care not to bury too deep. Cornelia Cozonac sees a lack of political will in eradicating corruption. In fact, she says, it is surprising how, despite possessing all the leverages for combating this phenomenon, the failure to file tax forms, the practice of withholding financial information and instances of tax cheating remain widespread among public officials. The Investigative Journalism Center conducted a study on the transparency of public institutions, sending more than one thousand requests for information on the incomes earned by their heads. Only 15 percent of those requests were properly returned. Cornelia Cozonac says that the CCCVP failed to react accordingly and inform relevant inspection bodies, like the Anticorruption Center and the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office, about the failure to disclose tax information. “One of the Anticorruption prosecutors told a meeting with reporters that if incomes were checked properly, one in each three officials should be prosecuted”, says Cozonac. According to the guest speakers, corruption could be eradicated or at least reduced if doctors, teachers and functionaries received decent salaries. They believe that the media could play a special role in this process by reporting broadly on each case of corruption. The Press of the Press series, aired twice a month on DTV channel, is part of the Media Reliability Project, supported by USAID, Millennium Challenge Corp., and the Academy for Education Development. The series is to host 12 televised debates meant to raise public awareness of matters related to strengthening the role of the media in combating corruption. The program will be rebroadcast by 10 local channels across Moldova. The project's authors hope that the public approach in boosting press reliability in Moldova could help alleviate the “information war waged by a number of media institutions”. The involvement of national and local media representatives, of public opinion shapers, of civil society representatives, of decision makers and influent politicians could help identify the existing problems and potential solutions to them. Another goal is to engage citizens in a process of evaluating the role of the media in their lives, which could foster, build and strengthen responsible relations on the axis citizen-press – press-citizen, and, in the long run, could contribute in building a culture of consuming media products.