Why Communication Matters

The single greatest obstacle to effective collaboration between electoral managers and the media is a culture of mistrust – and sometimes outright hostility – from both parties.

One aspect of this mistrust or hostility is a breakdown in communication. A lack of communication between an EMB and the media is a serious problem. It is an obstacle to achieving many of the objectives discussed in this topic area. A failure of communication will make the policy and regulatory role of the EMB much more difficult to achieve. It will also create serious obstacles to accurate media reporting of the electoral process. The breakdown of accurate media reporting will not lead to a vacuum – it will lead to inaccurate reporting.

Yet, far more serious than a breakdown of communication between EMB and media is the impact that this can have on the EMB’s capacity to communicate with the electorate. Media relations, important as they are, only form part of an overall communications strategy. An EMB’s media work will be more effective if it is clearly placed within a well-considered approach to communications.

Too many electoral management bodies downplay the importance of communication. They proceed on the assumption that all that is required is for them to work in an efficient and professional manner. Yet their efficiency and professionalism is not taken for granted by the public, the political parties or the media. EMBs need to develop strategies and skills to project what they do and how they do it to a wider audience.

Better communication will lead to an improved public image for the EMB, which brings obvious advantages in various aspects of its work. However, there are also two principled reasons why EMBs have an obligation to communicate:

• Voters have a right to information about how they are to exercise their right to vote. This includes information about the work of the EMB.
• The EMB is accountable to all stakeholders in the electoral process, including the voters and the candidates or political parties. With accountability comes an obligation to be transparent in its workings.

Developing a communications plan

The temptation in planning communications is always to do it in reverse order, starting with the well-tested techniques – press releases, news conferences etc – rather than with the overall objectives, messages and audience. This is tempting, but dangerous. Organisations (not just EMBs) stick with what is familiar and easy for them. This may not necessarily be the most means to communicate their messages to the required audience.

There are, of course, different approaches to communications planning. That developed by the Institute for Media, Politics and Civil Society is a particularly good one. But all effective approaches are likely to have the following steps in common (in more or less this order):

• Analysing your own strengths and weaknesses.
• Defining your message.
• Defining your audience.
• Developing a media strategy.
• Developing techniques of media relations.

Analysing Your Strenghts and Weaknesses

A credible and effective communications plan will be based upon a realistic assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the electoral management body.

These strengths and weaknesses will obviously include the attributes and resources of the EMB itself. Is it well funded? Does it have a trained and experienced press office?

Just as important, however, is an evaluation of how the EMB is perceived in the world outside. Does it have a high public profile? Is it trusted by the public? By the media? Is it perceived as professional and competent? Is it seen as being independent of the government of the day? These are all important questions that should be answered honestly. If there are negative perceptions of the EMB these need to be addressed. Any communications plan will need to include strategies for dispelling mistrust.

A technique commonly used in planning (not just for communications) is the SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for

• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Opportunities
• Threats

Defining Your Message

People planning a communications strategy are usually advised to define a clear and simple message, reducible to a single slogan. This works for many organisations, from a company selling a product to a group lobbying for policy change.

Electoral managers, by contrast, have a large number of different messages that they need to communicate to different audiences at different stages in the campaign.

Here is a genuine list of messages formulated by an African electoral commission in the course of its communications planning:

• Don’t sell your vote
• Where you register is where you vote
• Who is entitled to vote
• Card is not for sale/no bribery
• Vote is secret
• Do not register more than once
• Respect other’s views
• Encourage women to vote
• When to vote
• Where to vote
• How to vote
• Have you registered?
• Nomination deadlines
• Campaign lull
• Exercise your right to vote
• What were the results?

It is apparent that these messages, while all important, are aimed at different audiences and will assume different importance at various stages in the electoral process. For example, “Do not register more than once” is aimed at those entitled to vote and is specific to the registration period. “Where to vote” is aimed at the same audience, but is specific to the period immediately before polling day. “Nomination deadlines” is aimed primarily at potential candidates and is specific to the period before nominations close. “What were the results?” is aimed at everyone, but is again specific to the period after votes have been counted.

For practical purposes, it is usually useful to break down target audiences further. Hence, although “Have you registered?” may be a message of general relevance, the EMB may in practice want to target it at first-time voters, voters with disabilities or others who may not know how to register or be able to do so.

For a matrix example, click here

It may be useful to develop a simple matrix to define this relationship between messages, audience, and timing.

Defining Your Audience

Defining the audience is an essential step in developing a communications plan.

For an electoral management body, this might seem too obvious to need doing: the audience is the electorate, of course. However, there are three reasons in particular why defining the audience is indispensable:

• In practice many EMBs do not follow the logic of tailoring their communications strategy to their audience. Instead they take the easiest opportunities to communicate their message through the media without considering whether they are really reaching the people they want to speak to.
• Equally, many EMBs tend to talk not to their primary audience but to many other audiences – political parties, the media themselves – who are more demanding and often easier to reach.
• The audience is not a single undifferentiated mass. Breaking it down into its component parts will help EMBs to devise the different messages that are required by these different sections and identify the different media that should be used.

In general terms, then, defining the audience is not difficult. An EMB will wish to communicate information to the entire electorate at different points during the electoral process. The messages will vary, as will the means of communicating these, but this something to consider later in the planning cycle.

However, it will be useful to break this primary audience down into a number of sub-categories. These are defined by the fact that they either require different messages or can only be reached by different media than the main electoral audience as a whole. Examples of important sub-audiences might include:

• Voters outside the country.
• Voters with disabilities.
• Illiterate voters.
• First-time voters.
• Members of linguistic minorities.

In each of these examples it is clear that there is likely to be a distinct message, as well as a different medium to be used. Hence, for example, voters overseas will need information about casting a postal or proxy ballot. They cannot be reached through the national media of their home country, so other channels of communication must be found. First-time voters may require detailed information about registering to vote, as well as the mechanics of voting. They are likely to be reached more effectively through those media targeted at young people. And so on.

A clear example of an important secondary audience is the candidates and political parties. The media themselves are also a secondary audience for the EMB, both because they are a means of getting the message across to the primary audience and because there are specific messages that the EMB may wish to communicate to them.

Developing a Media Strategy

When an electoral management body has identified its primary and secondary audiences, as well as the messages that it wishes to communicate to each of these, it is then ready to devise a strategy for its media work.

A strategy is something concrete. It is determined by the particular strengths and weaknesses of the EMB, as well as by the particular characteristics of the media and the electoral environment. An EMB’s media strategy will vary enormously, for example, depending on whether there is a long history of democratic elections. It will be affected by the degree of public confidence in the EMB itself and whether its management of the elections its likely to be the subject of criticism.

One EMB did a SWOT analysis, identifying its Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It is an under-resourced electoral commission in a poor country. The results of its analysis looked like this.

This is probably typical of many EMBs in similar circumstances. Its strengths lay in the qualities of its staff, while the weaknesses were all caused by lack of resources. Opportunities were all drawn from the possibilities of collaboration: with the media, civic educators and external funders. Threats were the high cost of advertising and the danger of government interference in the commission’s work.

This particular EMB evolved a strategy that was, as far as possible, proactive. That is, the EMB would strive to convey its messages at the time and through the media of its choosing, rather than reacting to external events or media inquiries. Not only was this seen as a better way of communicating its chosen messages; it was also more cost-effective, because it allowed media materials to be prepared in advance. These materials would largely be prepared in private production facilities – see the opportunities column – during the slack periods of the electoral cycle. This would allow the commission to use its small staff most effectively: preparing proactive material during periods of low media interest and being available to react to media inquiries during busy periods.

This strategy took advantage of the strengths and opportunities available to the EMB. However, it was not dictated by these. It was directed towards conveying its chosen messages to a carefully identified audience. In this case, most voters did not read newspapers and could not afford television. Hence the offer of columns in newspapers was less important to the strategy than the use of radio production facilities.

The strategy should not be confused with the various techniques or tactics that an EMB might use to get its message across. This is not the best point in the planning process for the EMB to decide how many news releases it is going to issue, or who is going to speak at press conferences. These are questions that can be resolved when the strategy is decided upon.

In summary, an EMB developing a media strategy will probably need to answer the following questions:

• Is the strategy proactive or reactive?
• Is it low profile or high profile?
• Is it local or national?
• What are the major communications opportunities?
• What are the major communications impediments?
• What communications strengths are available in the EMB?
• What other organizations can the EMB collaborate with (NGOs, community groups and others)?
• What are the primary and secondary audiences?
• What are the key messages to be conveyed to those audiences?
• What are the most effective media for reaching the primary audience?
• Will the EMB use paid advertising through print, radio and/or TV? Can it afford to do so?
• Who is likely to be critical of the EMB’s running of the election?
• What might their key messages be?

Developing Techniques of Media Relations

The techniques of media relations that an EMB can use are mostly well known: media briefings, press releases, briefing packs, websites and so on. It is important, however, to emphasize three points about developing and using such techniques:

• First, the techniques of media relations are subordinate to the communications strategy than an EMB has developed. This strategy is fashioned to the messages that need to be communicated and the audiences that need to receive the messages. The strategy can be seriously subverted if inappropriate techniques are chosen.
• Second, while EMBs need to have the capacity to react quickly to events, most techniques of media relations can be prepared in advance and their use planned carefully.
• Third, wherever possible media relations should be handled by a specialist department (or, failing that, by a specialist media officer, preferably with experience of working as a journalist).

There is no time when an EMB will cease its relations with media altogether, but outside election periods the pressure from the media will be less, giving the EMB the opportunity to develop its media materials. This will be the time, for example, for website development, as well as producing voter education materials for dissemination through the mass media, or background information on issues such as the electoral system or previous election results to go into media briefing packs.

This is also the time to carry out basic preparatory tasks such as putting together contact lists of media houses and of the editors and journalists with particular responsibility for covering the elections. Broadcasters will have several different programmes all interested in election coverage. Each of these will need to be listed separately.

Various techniques available to EMBs will be examined on separate pages:

• Briefing packs;
• Pre-recorded audio and video material;
• Websites;
• Media briefings;
• Press releases;
• Media centre.

Briefing Packs

Preparing a package of basic information for the media can be an immense time saver, as well as helping ensure that their reports are accurate. Journalists need to know a mass of background information: the number of registered voters (per electoral district, if that applies), the names of the candidates, the offices being contested, the results last time, the number of broadcast slots and their timing, and so on. Foreign journalists may need even more basic political, institutional, and demographic information. In addition, all journalists will want to know what regular facilities are at their disposal: a media centre, regular briefings, facilities for the count, and so on.

Much of this information can be compiled in advance of the campaign. All of it is readily available to a moderately well-organized electoral authority and can be put together by a competent press officer without enormous effort or expenditure. Much of the material may double up with information that is made available to others, such as election observers.

Here is a typical checklist of material that might be included in a briefing pack:

• Election timetable
• List of candidates
• Background on Electoral Management Body (history, mandate, profiles of members)
• Registered voters – nationally and by constituency or electoral division if relevant
• List of constituencies or electoral divisions (if relevant) and polling locations
• Results of past elections
• List of sitting members of legislature (where relevant)
• Registration procedures
• Voting procedures
• Digest of electoral law and relevant regulations and procedures
• Sample electoral materials
• Party campaign code of conduct
• Journalists’ code of conduct
• Voter education material produced by EMB
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Contact details
• Briefing schedule and other information on Media Centre

Pre-recorded Audio and Video Material

Electoral management bodies often fail to make the best use of their media opportunities because of lack of preparation. Especially through the electronic media, EMBs can often be reactive rather than proactive. Officials are interviewed by news programmes but often fail to get their messages across to the electorate, either through lack of interview skills or a conflict between the different agendas of interviewer and interviewee. Preparing audio or video material in advance will often be a way of ensuring that the EMB gets its own message across in exactly the way that it chooses.

EMBs may be assigned voter information slots on public broadcasters (or sometimes as a licence condition for private broadcasters). Alternatively, they may buy airtime from broadcasters (or even persuade them to donate it free of charge). In countries where broadcasting is underdeveloped and there is a shortage of available material for airing, EMBs may easily get their materials broadcast for free, especially if they are lively, creative, and entertaining.

The advantages of pre-recording electoral material are the following:

• The EMB can decide exactly what is its message and formulate this message in its own words.
• The EMB can provide the materials in advance to broadcasters.
• The EMB can use creative techniques to convey its messages.

Pre-recorded materials are most likely to cover basic voter education and information issues. But the fact that the information is simple and basic does not rule out the use of imaginative means to convey messages. One popular and effective means is to use soap operas or songs to communicate messages – broadcasts that will be entertaining in themselves, as well as having serious meaning.

In Sierra Leone, for example, a radio soap opera called Atunda Ayenda (“Lost and Found”) dealt with various issues relating to peacebuilding after the country’s long civil war. Part of this focused on voter education. One episode, for example, dealt with misplacement of voter ID cards, interference by paramount chiefs in the election process, the voting process, and non-violent political campaigning.

Similarly, in Tanzania’s transitional elections in 1995, a soap opera broadcast as part of the Mnazi Mmoja radio magazine programme introduced voters to political and electoral issues. There were also animal fables. One told of a toothless old lion who did not see why he should stand for election: he had always been leader. He is supplanted by the self-confident lioness who does all the hunting.

Providing Information on Electoral Authority Web Site

The Internet enables electoral authorities to do many of the things that they do traditionally in their relations with the media in a much more rapid, efficient, and cost-effective manner. The potential of the Internet is constantly extolled, but for the purposes of media management in elections, its utility is fairly straightforward.

Through email, the electoral authority can distribute press releases, statements, and other material at very low cost and with relatively little effort on the part of its staff. By maintaining a web site, the authority can create, in effect, a virtual briefing pack. Moreover, it is one that can be constantly updated by the addition of new material as it becomes available. It will also be possible to run a results service through the web site.

Where the electoral authority is generating its own broadcast material - such as voter education slots - these can be made available through the web in digital format. However, anything that is available in digital format should also be available in hard copy.

An enormous variety of techniques can be used to make website material interesting and accessible, such as quizzes and games.

Click here to see an example of a well-maintained and interesting election website run by a public broadcaster. Click here for a good example from an EMB.

Media Briefings

A press conference is a means of conveying more information than can be carried in a single press release. It is also a way of occasionally putting senior officials in the election administration before the public (in the form of the media) to explain the electoral process.

Broadcasters like press conferences, of course, because a press release will only give them "white copy" - that is, a story with no picture or sound. At a press conference, broadcasters will be able to record and film. If a customized media centre is available, then this will make the practical requirements of broadcasters easer to meet. Otherwise, the organizers of a press conference will have to prepare for the needs of television and film crews, radio journalists, and photographers.

The usual format for a press conference is for a representative of the electoral authority to make a statement, which is then open to questions from journalists. The press conference should be chaired by someone other than the official making the statement. It helps to establish a clear time for the conference (and to start promptly - journalists have deadlines). The chairperson should ensure that journalists from a variety of different media, with different political viewpoints, have a chance to ask questions. Broadcast journalists will insist on the chance to ask their question (because they will want it broadcast). That is reasonable, but no one should be allowed to hog the questioning. Sensitive and balanced chairing will create a trust between the media and the authority holding the press conference.

A media briefing is usually something rather different. This will normally not be for broadcasting and sometimes is completely "off the record". If the latter, then the strict rule is that the person doing the briefing may not be identified. Politicians brief "off the record" the whole time. It is scarcely possible to envisage any circumstances where it would be proper or appropriate for an electoral official to do so. With detailed briefings, as with other information for the media, invitations should be issued to all media, regardless of political persuasion or ownership.

Press Releases

The press release is old technology par excellence, but can scarcely be bettered, even in the days of the Internet. Indeed, the Internet (whether through a web site or an email listserver) is often nothing more than a sophisticated means for distributing an old-fashioned press release.

From the point of view of the electoral authorities, the value of the press release is that they have control over what is being distributed to the media and can therefore determine its accuracy. For the media, of course, it means that the information is authoritative and that they have no excuse for misreporting it.

Press releases are obviously particularly useful for conveying information such as statistical data, verbatim statements, or lists of candidates - information that is tedious to relay in any other way, and where there is a danger that errors could creep in if the information were relayed orally.

Press releases can be distributed by a variety of means: hand delivery, fax, post, or posting on the notice board of a media centre, as well as by email. They may often accompany press conferences as a way of ensuring that detailed information is recorded accurately.

There is a delicate balance in how often to issue press releases. The danger of too many is that the media will lose interest. The danger of not enough is that the press officer will be left constantly responding to questions. The precise balance will be a matter for his or her judgment.

Writing a Press Release

This is why EMBs need a press officer - and why he or she should be a trained journalist. The technique of a press release is essentially the same as that for a news story in a newspaper. Journalists in most countries are trained to write stories in an "inverted pyramid" style, starting with a lead paragraph that conveys the essence and essential fact of the story, which is then developed in detail in subsequent paragraphs. Aside from making it clear to the reader from the outset what the story (or press release) is about, this also allows the item to be cut from the bottom upwards, without losing its essence. And that is how a press release should be too.

Like a good news story, a press release should be presented in plain language, not jargon. The average journalist does not necessarily have an attention span any longer than the average newspaper reader, so it is not safe to assume that they will read the press release come what may.

But the major reason for writing a press release like a news story is to have a written record. There also is a hope that it will be used directly in the newspaper. For this reason, keep the release short (and print it double-spaced so that there is room on it for sub-editor's marks). In poorer countries, where editors often scramble to fill their papers each day, they may be grateful for a ready-made piece of well-written copy.

Finally, make certain it is proofread carefully by one or more responsible senior staff members to ensure that it is absolutely correct in every detail.

Media Centre

The practicability of having a media centre, and the facilities that are put into it, will depend entirely upon the resources available to the electoral authorities. There is no doubt that if the funding is available to provide such a centre, then the quality of media coverage will improve. Gathering the media in a single centre makes many of the basic functions of media management - press releases, press conferences, briefings, etc - much simpler. Donors are sometimes willing to provide funding for at least a modest media centre, particularly if it is seen as building the long-term capacity of the EMB. For many electoral authorities, however, it is simply beyond their capacity.

A media centre could include some or all of the following:

• Telephones, faxes, and internet connections
• Computers for media use, but also linked to a results service
• Television monitor screens
• Pool feeds for audio and video so that individual journalists do not have to struggle to place their microphones on the speaker’s podium or jostle for limited camera space
• Radio and television studios for conducting interviews.

Where space constraints dictate, it is reasonable to establish time slots and sign-up procedures to ensure that all journalists will have at least some access to these facilities.

In large countries or those with federal political structures, a single media centre may not be enough. In India, for example, the Election Commission of India requires there to be a media room in each counting centre, as well as a media centre with full facilities in each State.

It is useful to have the Media Centre up and running a week or so before the election so that journalists will become familiarized with the facility and the briefing schedule prior to Election Day. Contacts with service providers (e.g., the telephone company) should be undertaken well in advance to ensure that the Centre is up and running on schedule. It is best to maintain the Centre in operation at least until the final announcement of official results.

Timing Work with Media

The communications work done by an EMB (as well as any regulatory responsibilities that it has in relation to the media) naturally falls into several different phases:

• Pre-election phase: this period is a preparatory one. Depending on exactly how the electoral system functions, it may include general voter education, registration of voters and parties, boundary delimitation, and nomination of candidates. The EMB will need to communicate to the public, through the media, on all these issues.
• Election campaign: this period will be the most intense, involving as it does preparation for voting itself, along with a variety of campaign issues. If the EMB has regulatory responsibilities in relation to the media, these will also come to the fore.
• Election day: immediately before and on the days of voting, the EMB will need to communicate a variety of messages about how and where to vote, as well as the progress of the poll. It will also need to ensure that the media understand clearly their rights of access to the voting process and the limits to this.
• The count: the EMB will be responsible for communicating regular and accurate information from the counting process, as well as regulating the access of the media to the count.
• Post-election phase: the post-election period may throw up a number of issues where the EMB is required to communicate with the public. This may be the case, for example, if there are disputes over the probity of the election process or challenges to the results. But in many instances, merely communicating the results may be a long drawn-out process.

Much of the preparation for this communication can be done in advance. Even when the exact content of media materials cannot be predicted, the schedule of communications can be included in a comprehensive plan that can be developed at a very early stage in the election process. This will allow the whole process to run more smoothly by, for example, establishing exactly the moments when a press release needs to be distributed or a media briefing held.

Pre-Campaign Issues

The notion of "pre-campaign issues" of course presupposes that there is a specified campaign period. Some countries, such as the United States, effectively impose no limits on the time of campaigning. Of course, in many systems, there may be little gap between different sets of elections: presidential, legislative, local, or provincial - even, in the case of the European Union, supranational.

But under any electoral system, there are issues that relate to elections and the media that occur, essentially, outside election periods. These are primarily:

• Voter education
• Discussion of the electoral system

In media coverage, these two are clearly related. Informed debate about the workings of the electoral system can take place only in the context of thorough public education on how the system works.

The content of voter education is not the focus of this subject area. However, pre-campaign voter education is likely to focus on a number of issues, depending on the electoral system and the political context:

• The composition and integrity of the EMB
• Who is eligible to vote
• Why it is important to be on the voters' roll
• How to register to vote
• Where and when to register to vote
• How constituencies are divided up

Another important question is what systems exist for ensuring fair coverage and access by political parties outside election campaign periods. Many countries have systems that allow political parties regular opportunities to put their views to the electorate in direct access programmes. Many of the same considerations apply in devising such systems as are used in allocating direct access slots during elections. These will, of course, be issues for legislators and broadcasting regulators more than for election administrators. But they do have an important bearing on the question of how level is the playing field when an election comes round.

Yet another fundamental issue - again for legislators and broadcasting regulators - is how far publicly-funded media are independent of the government of the day and the ruling party. The opportunity for direct access during an election campaign is helpful up to a point, but if the general tenor of broadcasting outside campaign periods is strongly biased, then it is difficult to regard the playing field as level.

Campaign Issues

For the media themselves the start of the campaign period is when election coverage really takes off. By contrast the smooth operation of the regulatory process will depend very largely on the system that has been put in place before the elections. By this stage the fundamental questions should already have been answered, with the media and political parties clearly understanding their roles and responsibilities:

• What laws or regulations govern media coverage of the campaign?
• Who is responsible for implementing these?
• What are the regulations governing direct access broadcasting?
• What are the regulations governing paid political advertising?
• What are the policies on hate speech and defamation, and any miscellaneous provisions on issues such as news blackouts and opinion polls?
• What is the mechanism if any member of the public, a political party or the media themselves has a complaint?

At this point the process of accreditation of journalists can be started.

It cannot be stressed too strongly that these issues should be determined in advance of the campaign. Determining these important questions of policy on an ad hoc basis will diminish the authority of the supervisory body in relation to the media and create the impression that some media are not receiving equal treatment.

Role of the Regulatory Body - Monitoring the Process

The central function of the regulatory or supervisory body, once the campaign process has begun, is to ensure that the regulations or agreements put into place in an earlier period are complied with: that direct access time is distributed according to the rules, that voter education is impartial and meets the required standards, and that parties and media are adhering to agreed practice on hate speech.

Very importantly, the regulatory body should also be on the lookout for any interference with the freedom of the media to cover the campaign freely, whether from the state or from any political party. It will need to convey information about any such interference to the appropriate governmental authorities, as well as issuing its own clear public condemnation. This is one of the most concrete ways in which the regulator acts as a facilitator and guardian of media freedom in the electoral process.

It is also during this process that the complaints procedure comes into play. It is vital that this mechanism is able to receive, investigate, hear, and resolve complaints quickly during an election period - long-term, post-election solutions will satisfy no one.

However, in order to address complaints - as well as all these other functions - the regulatory body will need to have the capacity to monitor media coverage of the election. This will enable it not only to respond swiftly to complaints with reference to its own observation of media coverage, but also to initiate its own action if parties or the media have breached laws or regulations.

In many cases, regulatory bodies simply are not able to carry out this monitoring function, which puts them at an immense disadvantage when it comes to evaluating complaints - but also makes them unable to initiate action if, for example, direct access slots are not being broadcast as they should. A monitoring unit undoubtedly costs money - mainly in wages, since it is labour-intensive. The budget for a fairly substantial nongovernmental media monitoring project lasting three months in an African country in late 2000 was about US$250,000.

One common alternative in well-established democracies is for the media to be required to submit a copy of all relevant material to the regulatory body. Assuming such an agreement is complied with, this meets the need to have material at hand to evaluate complaints, but it does not allow the body to initiate its own actions, unless it has staff available to evaluate all material submitted.

A third alternative, which is becoming increasingly common, is for the regulatory body to work in conjunction with non-governmental media monitors. Such a collaboration can be loose and informal or the subject of a detailed contract. In South Africa in 1999, for example, the non-governmental Media Monitoring Project was formally contracted to work with the Independent Broadcasting Authority. More often, the non-governmental monitors will submit their findings to the regulatory body, which will then decide whether further action is required.

Role of Non-governmental Organisations

Increasingly, electoral supervisory bodies work in collaboration with non-governmental organizations of different sorts. This co-operation is a practical realization of the general proposition that an active civil society is needed to safeguard democracy. There are three main areas where this collaboration is likely to take place in relation to media coverage of elections.

Training of Journalists

The regulatory body itself will often not have the capacity to organize training of journalists in election reporting skills, yet it is very much in its interests that those skills be imparted. In such circumstances, it can work in collaboration with journalism training institutions - and with the media houses themselves when they have in-house training schemes. The Tanzanian National Election Commission in 2000 went further afield and contracted the British Broadcasting Corporation to provide training for journalists.

Media Monitoring

International non-governmental organizations such as ARTICLE 19 and the European Institute of the Media have acquired considerable expertise in media monitoring. In a number of national elections, domestic non-governmental organizations have worked in partnership with international groups and have themselves acquired skills that allowed them to monitor. Hence, the Malawi Electoral Commission in 1994 relied heavily in its media work on the findings of a non-governmental monitoring project launched by local freedom-of-expression activists in collaboration with ARTICLE 19. In 1994, the South African Independent Broadcasting Authority contracted the non-governmental Media Monitoring Project to work with it.

Monitoring Media Freedom

Non-governmental human rights groups, as well as professional media bodies and journalists' trade unions, will monitor respect for media freedom as a matter of course. The regulatory body, by developing a working relationship and an exchange of information with such groups, can lend its authority to condemnation of violations of media freedom. It can also use its powers over government and political parties to prevent such incidents or to hold their perpetrators accountable.

Media Monitoring

Monitoring media output is increasingly recognized as an essential part of electoral management. If regulations governing media conduct are to be enforced, then it is necessary for the body responsible to know what the media have been doing. This applies whether that body is the electoral management body or some other media regulator.

Media monitoring may also have a secondary function: it is a way of determining how far the EMB has succeeded in communicating its messages through the media.

The actual monitoring process can vary in scope and sophistication and may be carried out in a number of ways: by a monitoring unit within the EMB or regulatory body , by a contracted non-governmental organization, by an academic body, or by a commercial company.

The issues that monitoring may address include the following:

• whether media have complied with the allocation of time for parties’ direct access;
• whether the timing of direct access slots has been fair;
• the manner in which inflammatory or defamatory statements by candidates have been reported;
• whether media have complied with any rulings by regulatory bodies (for example requiring the right of reply or correction).

Election Day Reporting

Once the polls have opened, the role of the media changes from what it was during the campaign period - and specific rules may be devised to govern this shift. In practice, the shift may have taken place earlier, with an embargo placed on political campaign reporting, opinion poll reporting, direct access broadcasts, or advertisements - or all of these.

Many countries, whether by law or custom, have a period when no news of the election is reported through the media. It is very common for this to be the case once voting itself has started. This is analogous with the usual prohibitions on campaigning within the vicinity of a polling station. The United Kingdom, for example, has a customary and voluntary abstention from reporting election campaigning on polling day itself, and many Commonwealth countries observe a similar practice.

Perhaps the best-known example of an obligatory reflection period is France, where - up until 2002 - it lasted for seven days. Italy and Sweden are other countries where this news blackout is prescribed by law, in both cases for one day before polling. Denmark also has a one-day blackout before polling day, but in that case it is traditional and not legally binding.

Without question, the country with the most extensive news blackout is Israel, where television (though not radio) is prohibited from showing political campaigning for at least 30 days before the election.

The issues posed by a ban on reporting during the poll become proportionally more complex depending on how long the voting takes, as well as how large the country is. In the later case, if the electorate is voting across several time zones, this poses especially complex issues since results in one zone may become available before voting has finished in another.

In essence there are two issues at stake:

• Preserving the integrity of the electoral process and the security of the vote
• Ensuring that the untimely release of information does not influence the vote in any way

The first of these is more straightforward than the second. It is usually not difficult to strike a balance between allowing the media some sort of special access to report on the voting process, but ensuring that voters' secrecy and security is not breached.

However, ensuring the maximum transparency and flow of information without improperly interfering with the process is more difficult, and a greater variety of approaches have been adopted.

Media Access to Polling Stations

The question of media access to the polling stations themselves can sometimes be a cause of some tension - most of it unnecessary.

What the media require, for the most part, is fairly general access - film or still photographs of queues of potential voters, of people actually casting their vote and so on. Journalists are often given a degree of access that is not granted to the general public. Sometimes non-voters are excluded from polling stations altogether - an attempt to avoid last-minute intimidation - but journalists and observers who can produce their accreditation are exempt from this. However, it needs to be made absolutely clear to the media that, despite this privilege, they are subject to the same legal constraints as everyone else. Therefore nothing that they do inside a polling station (or anywhere else, for that matter) may constitute intimidation or influence on the election process. It should also be made clear that journalists' access to polling stations is only under the strict control and with the agreement of the election officer presiding.

It is vital to ensure that the precise policy on media access to polling stations is communicated in advance to presiding officials, as well as to the media themselves.

The Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) (http://www.eisa.org.za) produced a useful list of "do's and don'ts" for the media in the 1999 South African elections. Media workers could:

• Show their press card to the presiding officer at polling and counting stations.
• Take photographs and conduct interviews with the agreement of the presiding officer.
• Take part in a "pool" system where large numbers of journalists who want a photograph or an interview with a personality are represented by selected few.

The guidelines also pointed out that in sensitive areas some voters might not want to have their photograph taken or be interviewed.

What media workers were not allowed to do was:

• Undermine the secrecy of the vote and orderliness of the election.
• Publish false information with the intention of disrupting or preventing the election.
• Publish information that caused hostility or fear to influence the outcome of the election.
• Publish information that may influence the conduct or outcome of an election.
• Publish the result of an exit poll during voting hours.

The EISA guidelines also pointed out that there were a number of general prohibitions that also applied to media workers, who could not:

• Interfere with the independence and impartiality of the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).
• Force or persuade anyone to register or not to register to vote.
• Force anyone to support or not support any political party or candidate.
• Take part in illegal political activity.
• Pretend to be a representative or candidate of a political party.
• Pretend to be involved in the IEC.
• Provide information about voting, counting of votes, or break the seal or open a ballot box in which there were voting materials. [1]

[1] Raymond Louw, A Handbook on the Media and Electoral Law, Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, Johannesburg, 1999.

Reporting the Vote

enjoy, there is the rather separate question of how they may report the vote as it proceeds. It is generally good practice to stop all direct access programming - party election broadcasts and advertisements - before the actual voting begins. The danger otherwise is of tactically targeted advertising based upon early assessments of how the vote is proceeding. That would be unfair and would offer no possibility of reply.

Some electoral laws or guidelines lay down specific restrictions on news coverage as well, on the basis that late coverage of campaign issues could have an undue influence. In particular, there is often a prohibition, voluntary or statutory, on reporting opinion poll findings.

The Montenegrin election reporting regulations prohibit publicly funded media from publishing either previous election results or "any predictions whatsoever about the election outcome before the polling stations are closed on the election day".

There are, of course, a variety of factors that may influence the vote as it progresses. Voter turnout is an important issue, since high or low turnouts are generally reckoned to favour one party or another. Reporting turnout may sometimes be the subject of some restriction.

In practice, these issues can usually be resolved by professional practice and sensible self-regulation. The British Broadcasting Corporation offers these guidelines to its producers on election day coverage:

Polling day reporting at all elections must avoid any references to election issues and, until the close of poll, we restrict ourselves to factual news about the election. Public opinion polls and reviews of the morning papers may be included. So too may statements of news importance by the parties, but we must ensure that counter-statements by opposing parties are broadcast as well.

Promoting Professional Coverage of Results

Reporting results sounds in principle like the least complicated part of the whole election reporting process. Yet it is remarkable how often it is very poorly carried out. In the Zimbabwe referendum of 2000, not a single newspaper or broadcasting station succeeded in reporting the correct results as issued by the Registrar General's Office! [1]

A major part of the problem lies with the media themselves - if they cannot correctly copy a column of figures, there is little that the election administrator can do about it. But there is much that can be done to promote accurate and professional results reporting.

Provision of a media centre will enormously facilitate media access to results. The mechanisms of counting will vary enormously between centralized and decentralized systems. For the purposes of media reporting, the significant point is whether results are released centrally or locally. If the latter, then media reporting is also likely to be decentralized. In either case, the media should be briefed – orally or in writing – as early as possible on the counting process: where it will take place, how it will take place, approximately how long it is expected to take, and where/when/how the results will be released.

When the system of local counts prevails, as in the United Kingdom, a massive media bandwagon has developed for projecting final results out of available results. Provided that no results or projections are released before the end of voting, this is essentially harmless fun (although dressed up in great statistical seriousness). The worst that can be said about it is that it encourages the treatment of an election as a horse race rather than a democratic choice.

What is particularly important, however, when results emerge gradually - especially true of a first-past-the-post constituency system - is that all results are reported promptly and accurately. This facilitates public scrutiny of the counting process and lessens the possibility of manipulation of the count. It is therefore a potentially important media function.

A rather different aspect of results reporting is media coverage of projected results in the form of exit polls and quick counts.

[1] Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe, A question of balance: The Zimbabwean media and the constitutional referendum Harare, March 2000.

Exit Polls

The exit poll was developed because of the thirst of the media for up-to-the-minute information on polling day. It is a survey of people who have just voted – as they “exit” from the polling station. The essential part of an exit poll is that those surveyed say how they voted. This allows pollsters to predict the overall result.

The information gathered in exit polls can often be complex. Detailed demographic information – sex, age, ethnicity, and income, for example – will allow more reliable prediction. Sometimes, exit pollsters also gather additional information about why voters made the choice that they did.

The potential pitfalls are obvious: voters providing misleading information or refusing to take part, poor sampling, and so on. However, well-constructed exit polls are usually an extremely accurate means of predicting the result. Hence their popularity with the media.

In reporting exit polls, all the same considerations apply as with opinion polls. Only exit polls run by reputable organisations should be reported. Reporting should include information about the location of the polling and the sample size, along with the margin of error. However, since exit polls are not, strictly speaking, predictive, there are various other points to take account of:

• Will reporting of exit polls influence those who have yet to vote? This is a particular concern in large countries where voting takes place across different time zones.
• What conclusions should be drawn if the actual poll result does not correspond to the exit poll findings? Some influential commentators have concluded that exit polls should not be reported at all. Three examples illustrate some of the issues surrounding whether and how exit poll findings should be reported.
• Part of the problem with exit polls is whether people will honestly report how they have voted. This is likely to be a particular issue in transitional democracies or in situations where there has been widespread intimidation. Voter education should have stressed that each person's vote was secret. In the Zimbabwe elections of 2000, a South African organization, the Helen Suzman Foundation, designed a complex exit poll questionnaire to take account of the danger that people would not honestly state how they voted. But one of the results of this complexity was that the findings were not released until later. Its main purpose, in the end, was to provide some evidence of how intimidation might have affected the result.
• In the Venezuelan referendum of 2004, there was a massive discrepancy between exit poll predictions – which predicted a substantial opposition victory – and the actual result, which was a government victory by more or less the same margin. Critics of the government took this to be evidence that the result had been rigged. Supporters of the government said that the company that carried out the exit poll was hired by the opposition and that it had used a biased methodology in order to discredit the official result.
• In the United States presidential election of 2004, exit polls predicted a narrow margin of victory for the ultimately unsuccessful Democratic candidate, John Kerry. Mainstream media comment did not see this as evidence of voting irregularities, but rather questioned why the exit pollsters had been mistaken. Indeed, one of the television companies sponsoring the exit polls, CNN, altered the exit poll predictions on its web site when it became clear what the actual result was going to be.

The initial attraction of exit polls to the news media was as an early taster in results programmes, before actual results are available. Morning newspapers, whose deadlines are often before any significant results are available, will also make use of them.

However, these three examples show how exit polls have acquired an additional significance, allowing the media to explore whether inconsistency between exit polls and actual results is symptomatic of problems in the electoral process. Well-designed exit polls in Zimbabwe provided a good indicator of electoral malpractice.

Inconsistencies between exit polls and results are only indicative. They do not prove that there was rigging or malpractice. As in Venezuela, further investigation would be needed to establish the cause of the inconsistency. There would be cause for concern, however, if news media did not try to explore and explain these inconsistencies, as in the US in 2004. And actually altering exit poll findings is seriously unethical.

Reporting on Quick Counts

Unofficial quick counts are a parallel counting mechanism that it is important to distinguish from exit polls. A quick count is a partial count of actual results (whereas exit polls are simply a species of opinion poll), used to predict the actual full result. A quick count may often be used as a means of forestalling any manipulation of the results. For the media, of course, the interest is similar to an exit poll in that it enables them to run an early results story.

What they have in common with opinion polls, is the need for the media to report with precision what the count actually measures - in other words, what sample it draws upon and the degree of accuracy that can be expected.

Post-election Reporting

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.