How media covered election campaigns

Dar es Salaam. Like in 2010, media played a key role in this year’s General Election. Actually, media crucial role in elections started with 2005 General Election. Many believed that media propelled President Jakaya Kikwete to victory.

Even then, there were positive and negative trends on how media was used by Mr Kikwete and other candidates. But, the trend shows that since then, politicians have been befriending media and journalists as a way of boosting their public support. In order to influence the public, the politicians or parties have, in some occasions, using media against their rivals, thus making careless media and individual journalists act against their ethics as shown in series of reports resulting from assessment of media performance during the last election as conducted by Media Council of Tanzania (MCT).

In its seventh report issued recently, MCT notes that what is evident during the period was that only a few section of print media showed impartiality in their reportage. According to the assessment, only few media outlets apportioned equal opportunity to major political parties and placing stories and articles reasonably equal.

“Print media however, mostly ignored other political parties other than Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and those under the Ukawa Coalition,” notes the report.

The MCT Ethics Manager, Mr Allan Lawa, says it is very unfortunate that the trend shows that media has allowed itself to be used by politician.

“If this trend is not arrested, there is great danger that the entire community is going to be spoiled,” warns Mr Lawa.

While on one hand politicians have been blamed for directly influencing media organisations and individual journalists, there is also emerging trend where pressure on media operations also comes from the owners. Some media owners have been influencing the way journalists they have employed work in order to suit their (media owners) interests, which in most cases tend to be politically inclined.

This is apart from media owned by politician or political parties. MCT has also noted this trend in its periodical reports though it has been shy in directly linking media owners influence on the way journalists operate.

But, a seasoned journalist and editor, Mr Wallace Maugo, who currently serves as Managing Editor of The Guardia owned by IPP Media, blames individual editors for agreeing to be used by the owners.

Narrating personal experience, Mr Maugo told a group of journalists during media and stakeholders’ meeting organised by Internews that he has served as editor for three different General Elections and he had not experienced pressure from a media owner.

“If I may use this years’ General Election as an example, I will testify that there was no point in our operations that media owner has pressured us on how to report. Therefore, we any credit or discredit which will be associated with The Guardian as far as election reportage is concerned, should be borne by the editors,” he said.

For his part, Media Institute of Southern Africa Tanzania Chapter (Misa-Tan) top official, Mr Gasirigwa Sengiyumva, noted that on election coverage many media outlets focused on ruling CCM and Ukawa.

“Worse still, the focus on these two political outfits did not centre on issues. It is a fact that the public was denied crucial information which would have helped them to make informed decisions during voting,” he said.

Media, election and gender

According to Tanzania Media Women Association (Tamwa) media coverage during the campaigns tilted towards men. This is in terms of those who were covered, sources as well as journalists who covered the election stories.

“We were able to uncover this in our media monitoring exercise. The monitoring covered a period between September 7 and October 7, this year,” notes Ms Godfrida Jola, an official from Tamwa.

According to Tamwa monitoring report, more than three quarters of all election related stories under the period contain male sources (87 percent) while only 12 percent of them had female sources. A total of 970 stories were assessed from six different newspapers.

“Through the assessment we found that it was very hard to find women sources in stories published in front pages of the newspapers. In most cases, stories which covered women candidates were hidden in the inner pages of the newspapers,” notes Ms Godfrida.

Tamwa observation established that the only topic where women were cited more was lifestyle stories such as fashion, celebrities, entertainment and women were very rarely covered in hard news.

In terms of journalists who were used to cover election stories, Tamwa noted in the report that they were also dominated by males. The report established that many newspapers have more male reporters who covered elections compared to female reporters.

For instance, a total of 1,075 reporters covered election campaigns for newspapers which were surveyed (The Citizen, Mtanzania, The Guardian, Nipashe, Mwananchi and Habari Leo) but out of them 558, equivalent to 52 percent were males while only 356 or 33 percent were females.

“It is only Habari Leo and Nipashe which slightly showed efforts to close this gender gap. Government owned Habari Leo had 43 percent of female reporters and Nipashe had 41 percent of them,” noted Ms Godfrida.

“Even when women were quoted as sources, they were not primary sources. Their voices were used to only add to other primal voices. Male voices dominated the coverage,” she says noting that the assessment established that gender gap in media is clear and more consistent because women are less exposed to politics through newspapers.

Ethical breach

According to MCT reports, a number of newspapers and television stations, went out to prove that they were working for a certain side. Though media specialists agree that it is not bad for a media outlet to support a party or candidate during an election, such media should follow and observe certain criteria. First, the media should declare its intention to support a candidate or party and if possible say why it has decided to take that position. Most important, a media organisation which has declared to support certain party or candidate, should not attack the rival side. This is contrary from what most media houses done during the last General Election.

MCT notes that though the editors did not disclose they were supporting which side, but their reportage clearly indicated which party of candidate they support. Worse still, many of the media outlet did this without disclosing whom are they seconding.

Exception

There were few exception, though. MCT notes in its reports that few media outlets observed impartiality, sobriety and objectivity in their reportage of election campaigns. Mwananchi Communications Limited (MCL), which publishes The Citizen, Mwananchi and MwanaSpoti was categoried by MCT as one of media houses which maintained professionalism throughout the campaigns.

In its eighth report, MCT has this to say over The Citizen reportage: “No hate speech was spotted and content was reported from two or more sides, hence lending it more objectivity. Signs of excessive editorial leaning towards any political party were not spotted.

Professionalism. This week, all election stories published by the The Citizen newspaper were based on two or more sources, which is a notable professional feat. In fact, 51 percent of content was supported with diverse perspectives of different sources commanding different views and ideas on election. Moreover, reports were based on true events and accurately reported in perspective.”

On part of Mwananchi, MCT noted: “Mwananchi newspaper provided space for women voices, as well as vox pop. On October 28, 2015 a vox pop content was covered headlined ‘Uchaguzi mkuu ulikuwaje?’ for which women also voiced their concerns about the conduct of the October 25 ballot. Mwananchi newspaper reported on such issues as governance, job creation, and agricultural development and last minute voters’ education during presidential campaign rallies.”