Reporting on elections is an important responsibility. For the press to fulfil its election integrity role, its reporting must be responsible, accurate and professional. Uniformed or biassed reporters can spin a story, giving the public an unfair and inaccurate perception of a candidate or the process. Given the nature of public trust that most of the press enjoys (see Media), the press must have the highest standards for accurateness and fairness (see Media Code of Ethics).
Some of the integrity problems that can arise from an unprofessional media:
- Inaccurate and unbalanced reporting. The media can create false impressions among voters and policy makers through inaccurate reporting. This can be the deliberate mis-stating of facts, the selective use of facts or fabrication. It can also be the unintentional result of not using professional standards, such as not checking sources or information, or reporting rumour as fact.
- Irresponsible reporting. Irresponsible reporting implies a deliberate disregard for the consequences of inaccurate and sensationalised reporting. The press can manipulate public opinion and action through the stories it covers, and the tone it uses. It can whip up nationalist sentiment by targeting recent immigrants or a particular political party. It can destroy the credibility of a candidate through unsubstantiated allegations of illegal or unethical activities. It can turn a 'quiet crowd of peaceful protestors' into an 'angry horde of rampaging rioters' through its choice of words.
A 1998 survey on media ethics in Hong Kong, found that 39% of the respondents felt ethics in the media was getting worse. The problems cited by the respondents included: exaggerated reports (41%), inaccurate reports (28%), and invented reports (22%). 292
Integrity in International News Coverage
The international media can play a very important role in election integrity (see Media), but coverage of the electoral process by the international press can raise a number of different integrity issues. These include:
- generalizing from brief impressions. According to Thomas Carothers, international journalists 'often behave in the same way as inexperienced observers, flying in a few days before crucial elections, having a look around on voting day, then issuing proclamations the day after. ... displaying a strong need to boil down the complexities of transitional elections into simple 'either - or' judgements.' 293
- selective use of informants. International journalists tend to rely on a selective number of local informants or sources of information. The outside journalist may not realize that these informants may be biassed or uninformed about the electoral process. They 'tend to give short shrift to the work of domestic monitors. They are often unfamiliar with the operation of such efforts and inclined to believe that domestic groups' conclusions will be biassed. They want the word from the foreign observers, not the locals...' 294
International media reports on the freeness or fairness of an election, can become a political football in the country holding the election. For example, a Pan African News Agency story questioned the reliability of an article in the Washington Post that claimed the 1999 Mozambican election results were fraudulent-- quoting an anonymous source in the State Department. According to the News Agency, the article was picked up immediately by Radio Mozambique and Mozambican TV and their reporting of the article raised an immediate cloud of suspicion in Mozambique over the validity of the election results:
The target audience is not in the country where the story was first published, but in the one where it is reproduced. This is an echo-chamber effect. The article is published in just one U.S. paper, but is then multiplied across the Portuguese media, and then amplified still further in the Mozambican media... The political effects are felt, not in the U.S., but in Mozambique, as it adds to the opposition RENAMO campaign to discredit all Mozambican institutions. 295
