Elections Commission media monitoring report found wanting
by Dr Prem Misir
`The government does not contest an election, a political party does.'
RESPONSIBLE reporting requires accuracy, balance, and fundamental fairness, and a compliance with the principles and ethics of journalism!
All Guyanese would agree with this remark.
In this vein, the first Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) Media Monitoring
Project Report, is strategically placed and timed to vitiate the lunacy that passes for journalism in Guyana.
Today, many broadcasting stations and broadcasters do not fulfill their civic and legal responsibilities. Broadcasters have entered into an almost sacred pact with the public, given that broadcasters obtain an exclusive use of public property - the spectrum. In return, broadcasters agree to serve the public interest.
However, precious few broadcasters comply with the public interest principle, to the point where news coverage and talk show content have lost meaningful dimensions. Balanced and accurate news coverage and talk show material are such rare phenomena that they should be placed on the endangered species list.
The GECOM media report, while an important first step to correct deficiencies in the broadcasting world, seems to have engaged, perhaps unwittingly, in methodological adventurism. But this is only the GECOM media team's first report!
The objective in evaluating this report is to assess its worth that would depend on the validity of the project as reported. A sense of the relevant literature as related to the Caribbean should be presented.
The authors of this report, also, have to synthesise the literature, related theoretical models, their experiences, and their perceptions of the problem. This synthesis is required so as to provide a rationale for this line of research.
The report acknowledges relying on methods used by media professionals in many projects worldwide. The authors may have very well done that, but they are vaguely presented.
The report attempts to determine whether the news coverage on election-related matters is balanced, accurate, and fair. In reviewing news items over the two-week period, the criteria used to establish 'balance', 'accuracy', and 'fairness', must clearly be spelt out.
These standards, enabling quantification, must be presented, as measurement is one of the fundamental pillars of social research. We need to have a general working agreement on the use of these terms.
This is the conceptualisation process, the end-product of which will give us 'indicators' and 'dimensions' of balance, accuracy, and fairness. The report also needs to indicate the operations utilised to measure these specific concepts.
In addition, the methods section, should indicate the standards used to classify news items into 'positive', 'neutral', and 'negative'.
The use of 'government' with regard to election-related matters in the news coverage, constitutes another problem in conceptualization. Outside of its legislative mandate, the government has no business in dabbling with election matters.
The government does not contest an election, a political party does.
The report needs to present all news items reviewed, perhaps, appendicised,
so we can ascertain whether they objectively pertain to the political parties, GECOM, or 'government'. The report does not provide this information, essential for assessing and evaluating the project.
Further, news items relating to elections under 'government' should be included in the report, given that 'government' does not contest elections, and given that 'government' constitutes the largest amount of news coverage, as illustrated in the pie-charts and bar graphs of the report.
Again, apparently, for the state media, no distinction is made between reports on governmental programmes and projects, and election-related items.
Given this blurred distinction, the report erroneously suggests that the state media provide a high positive coverage for the government. This coverage for the government seems to include both facts for governmental projects mixed with election-related matters.
The role of the state media worldwide is to report and be the mouthpiece for nation building projects for their governments. Many state media reports in
Guyana are on governmental activities as facts on project development, and these need to be reported to the nation. These activities are essentially facts on programme development, and, therefore, should not be confused with election-related matters.
The GECOM media review team must only include election materials as government coverage for the purpose of their monitoring.
It is important that the state media - GBC, GTV and the Guyana Chronicle - act like today's spokesperson for developmental projects and outcomes, contributing to the national agenda. Given the attempt by private media houses to manage public sentiment through presenting erroneous information periodically, we cannot solely depend on these private media to disseminate information on the nation's developmental projects accurately, fairly, and with balance.
Among the responsibilities of our state media, may be the following:
** The state media are expected to expose the public, both nationally and internationally, to the country's developmental efforts that contribute to
nation building.
** The state media mission is to promote material interest and national security through informing the public by presenting consistently the government's philosophy, policies, programmes and projects.
** The state media perform the role of public relations and media policy planner. In this way, the state media administer public relations campaigns on national agenda items, such as HIV/AIDS, anti-narcotics, environmental issues, democracy, gender, ethnicity, housing, education.
** The state media present policies and developmental programmes clearly and effectively, and provide responsible discussions and opinions on these policies.
** The state media represent Guyana, not a single segment of Guyanese society, and so are expected to give a balanced and comprehensive projection.
In the section on 'paid political advertisements', the report unnecessarily maligned the Guyana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) for rejecting an advertisement submitted by the People's National Congress/Reform (PNC/R), publicising their January 14th rally. This is not the correct situation.
The media code of conduct allows media houses to reject material if they are "hateful, ethnically offensive, to promote public disorder or threaten the security of the state." In the eyes of GBC's management, the advertisement had a message that could promote public disorder, and, therefore, was rejected in its initial form and content.
GBC subsequently requested the PNC/R to revise the advertisement. The GECOM media monitoring team needs to re-examine the content of the original PNC/R advertisement. Incidentally, the PNC/R submitted a modified version of this advertisement to GTV and GTV carried it.
Interestingly, over the two-week period in which the GECOM review was conducted, the report indicates that no airtime was allocated to the PNC/R on WRHM Channel 7, Capitol News. Re-examining the tapes may very well reveal the contrary.
It boggles my mind as to why talk shows have not been subject to the same scrutiny as news coverage over the GECOM 2-week review period, given the blatant and uncivil disregard of and non-compliance with the GECOM media code of conduct, and general principles and ethics of journalism by some talk show hosts.
Intriguingly, the GECOM media team's suggestion of sharing its data with the independent Elections Media Monitoring and Refereeing Panel (EMMRP), is really improper, if only for the reason that EMMRP is meant to be 'independent'.
GECOM has taken an important first step in understanding how the media behave.
Undoubtedly, GECOM will be engaged in more steps to fully comprehend the nuances of some of this hellish, unprofessional, and inappropriate brand of broadcast journalism!
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