The extent to which a country's government has a history of respecting media freedom will have a great bearing on the capacity of the media to report elections. Often, a country with little history of respect for freedom of expression also has little experience of elections, or at least of free and democratic ones.
The significance of this history is that, even where restrictions have been lifted - for example in a transition from autocratic to democratic rule - the media may still be influenced by the memory of past repression and be reluctant to report in a bold and independent fashion. Or the opposite may be the case: the media revel in a new-found freedom, but exercise it in an unprofessional and irresponsible way. The legacy of restrictions on media freedom may linger in the form of a state-owned and government-controlled broadcasting station that, even in the context of a newly democratic political system, is reluctant to act independently of government. Very often, a mixture of all these elements is in play.
Of course, sometimes the media may have developed its own professional standards and effectiveness in adversity. In that respect, they may be well-prepared for the challenge of reporting an election. But they are still unlikely to have much practical experience of election coverage.
In each of these contexts, media regulatory authorities and electoral authorities have an important role in creating a more favourable environment that will allow the media to carry out the unfamiliar functions of election coverage freely and professionally.
There are a variety of means whereby governments can infringe media freedom. The most common include:
- Physical attacks on the media and journalists. The most serious attacks on the media usually have the aim of silencing some critics and intimidating others. Journalists are beaten or even killed or "disappeared". Media premises are attacked, illegally raided or fire-bombed. Newspaper vendors may be targeted, with papers illegally confiscated or the vendors themselves beaten.
- The use of extreme legal powers against the media. The most threatening of these is pre-publication censorship, whereby each issue of a publication must receive prior official approval. Licensing of publications, or of journalists, gives the authorities massive leverage over the media. A whole battery of laws may be used to restrict freedom of the media, often on grounds of national security. These are often used as the basis for criminal charges against journalists and media owners, which can lead to long periods of imprisonment. Sometimes, a succession of sedition or criminal defamation charges are used against the media, even when cases are unlikely to come to trial, with the aim of intimidating journalists and draining their resources. Legal measures against printers and distributors are a particularly effective way of hampering the operation and the independent-minded media. Restricting the importation of newsprint has often been used as a tool to constrain media freedom.
- Tight regulation of the media. A total or virtual state monopoly of the media is a highly effective way of preventing critical voices from being heard. Although it is the deaths of journalists in the line of duty that grab the headlines, there can be little doubt that direct government control over the media has been - and continues to be - the commonest means for restricting what the public learns.
- Even when independent media exist and are nominally free from legal constraint, government control of vital resources such as electricity, printing presses, transmitters, and computers can often be used to cow or silence independent voices.
It is in new or "transitional" democracies that the legacy of these restrictions will loom largest. Often restrictive laws remain in place, even if they are not used as frequently as before. Their very existence may exercise what is usually known as a "chilling effect" on media freedom. Sometimes, during a transitional period, violence against the media may actually increase, as repressive governments no longer have recourse to the same legal measures to control the media and resort instead to secret and informal means of repression. Most frequently, the third set of restrictions - government control over a large section of the media - is likely to remain in place. Governments may also exercise tight control over the system of broadcast licensing, with the result that even "independent" media are in fact owned by their close political allies.
But it is not only dictatorships that restrict media freedom. Even in long-established democracies, there is tension between governments and the media. This is inevitable and not entirely undesirable - since, after all, the media are meant to act as a "watchdog" over government. But these tensions are not entirely healthy. Journalists in established democracies are less likely to face physical threats in carrying out their duties, but many have to contend with legal actions, for example to compel them to reveal confidential sources of information. Many of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights that have laid down standards on governments' obligations to respect media freedom have arisen from cases where European journalists' rights have been infringed.
