If journalists are to report elections professionally it is clear that they must be trained to do so. The need is self-evident but often it is not met.

Fundamentally, the professional requirements of reporting elections do not differ enormously from reporting anything else. In particular the ethical imperatives of accuracy, impartiality, responsibility and probity assume great importance in covering elections – but these should be the bedrock of a journalist’s working method in any case.

However, there are many additional areas of knowledge that journalists will need if they are to report elections effectively. These include:

• An understanding of the political and electoral system;
• An understanding of the overall electoral process;
• Familiarity with electoral law, especially as it affects media reporting;
• Understanding of the role of the media in covering elections;
• Knowledge of the country’s election history;
• Detailed knowledge of the mechanics of voter registration, boundary delimitation, the vote, the count and any other issues of relevance (such as the use of technology in voting or the use of postal votes, if these are potential matters of controversy);
• Types of reporting that are fairly specific to elections (such as reporting opinion polls).

Many of these are matters that could easily be covered in the basic curriculum of a journalistic training institution. In practice, however, they seldom are. Certain types of specialized coverage, such as court reporting, are routinely included as part of the basic training for a journalist (even though many journalists will never employ these skills). In practice most journalists will end up reporting on elections, but many are unprepared to do so.

The consequences of this lack of knowledge may be serious. Not only is there a likelihood that the media will report inaccurately or, at best inadequately. They will also be unable to play their role of monitoring the electoral process and holding administrators to account for any shortcomings.

This frequent lack of training is often part of a more general problem of access to training by journalists. Many poorer countries do not have any journalism training establishment at all.

The lack of training of journalists in covering elections is often made up by ad hoc training courses run by a large variety of institutions. These may take place either in the country concerned (with the advantage that more journalists can attend) or at the training institution.

There are a number of potential problems to be overcome when outside training institutions organize training:

• How can it be made relevant and specific to the conditions of the country concerned?
• How will it be possible to reach enough journalists to have an impact?
• When can journalists be trained to have the maximum benefit but not interfere with their actual reporting duties?

There are no simple answers to these questions. However, they can best be addressed if training is organized with close consultation of the most important stakeholders: the electoral management body, media regulators, media proprietors and journalists’ professional bodies and trade unions.