Media tours provide an excellent opportunity for media to witness processes and facilities first hand. Tours are similar to press conferences only in that they involve an assembly of a larger group of media at once. However, media tours need not be open to all media at once, as this could become unmanageable or would disrupt on-going processes at the locations of the tours. Instead, a Media Relations Department may choose to implement a fixed number of spots that media need to sign up for in advance.
Media tours can be of any facility or process that allows media to get an inside view of processes. This is good for transparency and it provides participants video or audio footage for their own broadcasts. Examples of media tour locations and events include:
- Operations centres (sometimes including packaging and shipping of sensitive materials);
- EMB general facilities and offices;
- Distribution of voter education material;
- Voting material (pre or post election) storage areas (where this does not pose a security risk but rather provides indication to the public of safe storage);
- Data collection centres.
Media relations staff members need not prepare statements for these tours. Instead they will simply guide media participants through the sites, explaining the various steps to the processes as well as answering general questions.
