Media interest in an election does not stop with the announcement of the result. For them, it is a continuing story, leading on to the inauguration of those who are newly elected, the selection of a new government, and so on.

For the election authority, however, any formal regulation of the media ends with the announcement of the result. But there is one area where a formal media involvement may continue: if there are challenges to the results, this will be a legitimate story that media will no doubt cover. It should do this in accordance with the usual professional standards governing reporting of court proceedings.

An important twist, however, will be if the behaviour of the media itself forms a dimension of a challenge to results. This has increasingly been the case, for example after the Kenya elections of 1997. The growing interest in the role of media in elections means that serious imbalance may be taken as evidence that an election is unfair.

Findings of media monitoring projects may be used as evidence, and the regulatory methods of the supervisory body may come under scrutiny. Monitoring findings will establish if coverage was unbalanced or biased, but this in itself would be insufficient to demonstrate impropriety in the conduct of the election. To prove this, a court would probably need to be satisfied either that a government interfered directly (and perhaps consistently) with media content, or that a regulatory body failed to implement rules guaranteeing access by the parties to the media and balanced news coverage.