New Media Outshines Partisan Election Coverage

Michael Hedges November 22, 2012 Follow on Twitter

More and more, elections are being monitored by international organizations for more than polling practices. Campaigns and media coverage is under scrutiny. As new media technology takes an increasingly important role in political campaigns election observers must look beyond traditional messages.

The people of Sierra Leone went to the polls last weekend (November 17) to elect a president and parliament. The center-left All People’s Congress (APC) party of President Ernest Bai Koroma faced the center-left Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), led by former president Julius Maada Bio, and several smaller political parties. It was the third general election since the 1991-2002 civil war. Observers generally endorsed the election process. Voter turnout was reported high and results will be announced next week (November 28).

Media’s role in the recent Sierra Leone elections mirrors that in other African nations where press freedom is challenged. Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) ranked Sierra Leone 63rd and strongly improving in its 2011-2012 Press Freedom Index. Radio is the most widely used traditional media in Sierra Leone, terrestrial television less so and newspapers rarely available outside the capital Freetown. 

Election observers from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) concluded the elections in Sierra Leone were “free, fair and credible.” Another monitor, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), noted the “calm and disciplined atmosphere” on election day. The Commonwealth Observer Group called the election campaign “free and robust” but noted “most of Sierra Leone’s media was openly partisan,” the exception being the Independent Radio Network (IRN), a network of community radio stations funded by the United Nations, several NGOs and the Australian government.

The European Union Election Observer Mission (EU-EOM) was more critical of media coverage of the elections. “Although the ruling APC and the main opposition SLPP dominated the political arena, APC clearly benefited from the advantages of incumbency by making use of state resources and enjoyed more media coverage,” said the statement attributed to chief observer Richard Howitt (November 19). “The public broadcaster Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) gave access to political parties and candidates through free-airtime programs. Nevertheless, in key areas like news bulletins and election related programs SLBC showed biased coverage in favor of the ruling party.”

“On SLBC Radio the unbalance was slightly lower,” continued the preliminary report, “with APC receiving 40.5% of the total airtime on news and programs and SLPP being afforded 23% of the coverage. None of the remaining parties received 8.5% of coverage either on radio or on SLBC TV.”

The SLBC called the EU-EOM report “misleading” and criticized the observers for misunderstanding the legal mandate to cover parliament, the judiciary and executive branches. “The Corporation then views the inclusion of SLBC’s coverage of government activities into their elections preliminary statement as misleading and contradictory, capable to undermine the valuable strides the corporation has made to represent the opinion of all categories of Sierra Leoneans,” said a statement from SLBC Director-General Elvis Gbanabom Hallowell (November 21). The SLBC operates one national television channel and one national radio channel.

Mobile technology, empowering citizen journalists, played a interesting role. In a country where “more people have mobile phones…than have access to electricity,” an innovative merger of technology and journalism provided a chronicle of the Sierra Leone elections as they took place.  London-based start-up Radar Media Development trained citizen journalists, adapted mobile text and email technology then curated reports. “Our model is that we are giving people the skills to send micro-reports by SMS that will then be uploaded onto Twitter, Tumblr and news blogs, on their behalf,” said Radar founder and co-director Libby Powell to journalism.co.uk (November 20).

Recent Sierra Leone governments have encouraged internet communications technology (ICT) development and attracted financial and technical support from the government of India for an ICT development center.

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