It’s easy to say journalists should be fair in covering the coming poll, but what does that really mean? ”Fairness” can be analysed in three ways: for whom; in terms of quantity and quality of coverage; and the role of the media.
The first issue is: to whom is election coverage supposed to be fair? Each political party naturally believes that the obligation is owed to it.
There’s some truth in this, but the election belongs to citizens, not the politicians.
The consequence: journalists need to prioritise what’s fair to the electorate. And that means not dancing to the tune of what the parties want.
Politicians generally want the media to be a megaphone for what they think is important.
However, the public may well have other views, and they want to know how their own issues are addressed by political campaigners.
For instance, the African National Congress will probably punt jobs and social grants as its agenda-setting issue; the DA will do a crime number. The Congress of the People (Cope) will concentrate on the treatment of ex-president Thabo Mbeki.
But other topics could turn out tops if journalists find out what’s important to the voters. Through direct questions, or media-commissioned research, it may easily emerge that voters are most concerned about the cost of living.
Or maybe the electorate has worries about the World Cup, xenophobia, the enduring mess in the schools, healthcare, opportunist politics, etc.
In short, the first standard for ”fair” coverage is citizen-centrism.
A second dimension of fairness is how much exposure each party gets, and the quality thereof.
As regards the quantity aspect, the bigger and established players naturally feel entitled to proportionate attention from the media.
For the public, however, fairness also requires that smaller and untested parties should get a minimum amount of exposure. After all, no voter can choose between parties if some of them remain off the radar.
Specifically for radio, the quantum of coverage (in one area) is governed by regulations released last month by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa).
These controls apply to party election broadcasts, which are two minute spots offered free by a given station. Icasa calculates who gets how many spots according to the number of candidates that each party fields, with a minimum for everyone.
This differs from the last election in which the Icasa formula also included a weighting for how many MPs and provincial MPs a given party had. That clearly benefitted incumbent parties, so it’s fair to drop this.
But Icasa’s latest regulations have also dropped a section on guidelines for general broadcast journalism on the elections. In the past, the agency used to recommend three principles in regard to quantity of coverage:
- That ”equitable” treatment does not mean ”equal” amounts of coverage — it also depends on newsworthiness.
- Not every party has to be covered on every issue, but all voices should be heard over the time of the election period.
- There should be caution about coverage of government so as to avoid unfair advantage to a ruling party.
By dropping these provisions, Icasa hasn’t helped broadcasters. But broadcasters could still be proclaiming these themselves — as part of their coverage pledge to the nation.
On the quality aspect of coverage, Icasa has also dropped two past fairness principles from its new regulations:
- A ”right to reply” whereby, over time, a severely criticised party should be entitled to respond to its attacker.
- Pro-active, rather than passive journalism, so that there is not an unfair advantage to parties who know how to work the media.
These two points are history for Icasa, but they still have enduring validity. A third can also be added:
- The public’s interest is not only in hearing about parties’ platforms, but also in how politicians can stand up to tough questioning. This means not giving an easy ride to one party while grilling another.
These three kinds of fairness principles are applicable to both broadcast and print journalism. They guide media’s special responsibilities during election time.
There is third issue of fairness: the need for media to be ”fair” to its own role in relation to constitutional values. This means doing journalism that is informed by, for example, sensitivity to:
- Assessing the parties in terms of numbers of women candidates and what their manifestoes say about gender issues ( IPS has a good resource on this.)
- Highlighting where the parties stand on freedom of expression and media freedom.
In other words, ”fairness” requires that journalists should be playing the role of constitutional guardian.
Without this dimension, they could be fair to parties and to the public — but foul up when it comes to their institutional rights and responsibilities regarding the Constitution.