Domestic observation groups and civil society organisations and have a broad range of incentives for monitoring media coverage of an election. Their primary aim is likely to be the same as that of an electoral management body or international observation mission: to ensure that news coverage is fair and professional and that different parties and candidates have access to the media.

Beyond this, like international observers, they may be concerned, for example, with the content of electoral coverage. What topics do media reports cover? How far do these reflect the particular agendas of parties or candidates? Is electoral debate portrayed in a professional and dispassionate manner or do the media inflame partisan sentiments by their language or the style of their coverage?

Do the media actually meet the information needs of voters (an obvious question, but one that is perhaps asked too infrequently)? Are the positions of parties and candidates evaluated from viewpoint of the voter – see Voter’s Voice Reporting – or are the media complicit with the candidates in the uncritical presentation of their policies? Are the media playing an effective educative role? Do they tell voters what they need to know about where, how and why to vote?

How far are the interests and voices of minority or marginalized groups reflected in the media? Are women’s voices being adequately heard in the election campaign through the media? If not, why not? Are the media reflecting social gender bias uncritically, or are they making an effort to challenge it?

The range of issues that civil society media monitors and domestic observer groups have tackled is broad. Seldom is a media monitoring operation going to be able to address all these issues. What they can do, however, is to bring their particular expertise to bear upon particular aspects of media coverage.  Sometimes this area of expertise will be in the area of the media itself. NGOs concerned with media freedom and with professional standards are often engaged in monitoring. The purpose may be both to defend the media against political interference, whether from governments or private proprietors. Or it may be to promote professionalism in coverage.

On other occasions, the relationship between civil society monitors and media has been more difficult. Hostility between government media and civil society monitors is common. The latter are accused of promoting their own quasi-political agenda. Sometimes private media houses exhibit a similar reaction – for example in Moldova in 2005 – questioning the qualifications and bona fides of a monitoring group that produced critical findings.

On occasions, monitoring groups will address other issues too. An example of a broader focus came in media monitoring of the Ukrainian presidential election in 2004. One NGO, Equal Access, conducted comprehensive media monitoring focusing solely on media access allocation to candidates. In parallel, two other organisations, the Institute of Mass Communication and the Kharkiv Human Rights Group, ran a monitoring project that addressed other issues in addition to the allocation of time and space to candidates. They looked at coverage of issues of particular concern to minority ethnic groups – including Crimean Tatars – and at the representation of women in election coverage. Their findings were hardly surprising – under-reporting of minority concerns and a low frequency of women’s voices as news sources.  These findings however, provide an important baseline information if these issues are to be tackled in future.

Domestic organisations monitoring the media can often do so for a longer period than international agencies or EMBs are able to.  They are also better equipped to look at subnational elections which may be of less interest to other monitors. For example, the non-government Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia monitored media coverage of the 2007 Commune Council elections for three months including the campaign and counting periods. They revealed major bias in the reporting of these elections.[1]