Elections

Delivering Service: Local Government Elections 2006 and the Media by MMP

The 2006 Local Government Elections demonstrated many of the patterns from past of election coverage, with the elections attracting much media attention, but event-based reporting predominating. The majority of the coverage was national, rather than local, as may be expected in a local election. Beeld was the exception in this regard.

The fairness of coverage was compromised by media not setting their own agenda, but in allowing national party figures to do so. While national political figures featured largely, local issues only made the news mainly through public service delivery protests.

Women featured during this period in the media as a result of party manifestos to promote women within their ranks, not from a media strategy to seek out and discover female sources.

Race featured narrowly in the media, based on party announcements and perceived race-based voting.

Making their mark: Media Monitoring Projects coverage of the 2004 elections by admin

MMP monitored the South African national elections in 2004 to determine whether the media fulfilled their obligations to cover the elections in a free, fair, balanced and informative manner. Particular attention was given to special issues, including gender, poverty and HIV/AIDS. The Star topped our elections top 10, read the report to find out why.

LGE2K: An Analysis of Media Coverage of the 2000 Local Government Elections by Sandra

On the 5th of December 2000 South Africans voted for the second time in the Local Government Elections. Unlike the 1995 LGE which were preceded by the euphoria of the first national democratic elections and doubt as to whether the LGE would take place, the 2000 LGE, although delayed against the background of the opposition parties uniting to oppose the ANC took place uneventfully. There were a variety of candidates who stood as independents. In addition to this it was expected that as people had already voted for local government in 1995 that there would be greater knowledge of the process and consequently greater capacity for change at local levels. Overall the coverage by the media was low compared to previous elections, this was in line with the general attitude of political parties who appeared to express minimal interest in the process. While it was true that people had greater knowledge of the system the IEC had to deal with the number of municipalities being reduced from over 800 to around 224. The concomitant changes in the voting system as well as the complexities involved were poorly represented in the media.

So What’s News in the Elections? Events Not Issues: An Analysis of Media Coverage of the 1999 Elections by Sandra

In 1994 the Media Monitoring Project (MMP) monitored the media coverage of the first democratic elections. In our final analysis we found that the media’s reporting of the “liberation election” was characterised by a justified and important emphasis on the historic nature of the event and by balanced reporting. But while the reporting was balanced it was not informative. The reporting of the election was more about liberation than about policies and political issues.

For the 1999 elections things were very different. The goodwill and euphoria had been replaced by rigorous politicking, and the bread and butter issues of our society were expected to feature prominently in all the parties’ campaigns. Consequently the demands on the media would be significantly different and more difficult. The media would have to play a bigger role in giving the citizens of our country information, about parties and their policies, about the critical issues faced by our society and the solutions and proposals which the various parties offer. The media would have to play the role of equipping South Africans to make informed decisions at the polls rather than celebrating their freedom as they did in 1994. This would be the role of the media in a free, democratic society.