The ways in which non-governmental media monitoring projects go about their business varies greatly, both in methods of organizing the project and publicizing the findings, and in what is monitored and how. In many cases media monitoring projects have been put in place in transitional democracies to determine how well the publicly funded media are meeting their obligations to report fairly and provide equitable direct access programming. In that case, the standards against which the monitors judge the media are derived directly from national electoral law or from international guidelines. But increasingly media monitors are looking at both publicly and privately owned media. The obligations of the private media may derive in part from law, but are based primarily on the ethics of journalism.
To be credible, media monitoring must be thorough and comprehensive. In practice this will mean that all news, current affairs and other election programming should be covered, as well as the equivalent material in the print media if they are being monitored too. The team doing the monitoring will have to be familiar with all the languages being broadcast, as well as understanding the politics of the country - including political nuances in coverage that most outsiders would not grasp. This means, in practice, that the monitors must be nationals of the country. But at the same time they must be impartial - and be seen to be impartial. This is especially difficult in a transitional democracy. Young and highly motivated monitors - and they will have to be that because the process is long and tedious - are likely also to have strong political sympathies. (In one media monitoring project in a transitional democracy, the young monitors would switch on their tape recorders and then rush off to take part in rallies and demonstrations.) But this type of political activism must be abandoned for the duration of the project.
Print monitoring is relatively straightforward because the newspapers can be read at leisure. Broadcast monitoring poses more serious logistical problems because it must be captured at the moment it happens. This will usually be done live, although monitors will always record all the items monitored and retain the tapes for the duration of the project. This allows them to verify their findings later, but it is also a way of monitoring broadcasts at awkward times of the day and night.
Each item monitored - a news bulletin or an issue of a newspaper - will be recorded on a form. Increasingly the information recorded on these forms will then be stored in a computer database. (See 'mey32' for sample inputting forms.) This clearly speeds the process of generating graphs and statistical tables. It also makes it possible to search to find out, for example, what emphasis different media have given to different parties or issues. Or it can be used to find out what (and how many) sources different media use.
The monitors are looking at three main areas:
Quantitative analysis: this means simply measuring the number of items devoted to each party or candidate, as well as how long they are (whether in time or in column inches). It can also involve counting and identifying the sources of stories. This is important as an objective measure of balance. Monitors might also count the number of items on different issues: the economy, constitutional reform, crime, political violence - whatever are the relevant issues of the day. In the case of direct access programming, monitors will not only be looking at whether parties are receiving their correct allocation, but also at the time of day when these are broadcast. The timing of news items is also important - has the opposition leader's big rally been relegated to a graveyard slot in the small hours of the morning?
Qualitative analysis: counting alone will not adequately explain the strengths and weaknesses of media coverage. It is not enough to complain that the ruling party is receiving more media coverage than the opposition - there may be good reasons for this, for example in terms of their public support. But equally, simply counting the number of items may conceal the fact that some parties' 'quota' of coverage may include items that show them in a bad light. For example, in South Africa before the 1994 elections the state broadcaster kept its own statistical record of party coverage, which showed that the African National Congress, then in opposition, was receiving extensive coverage. Yet this proportion included much negative coverage, such as the reporting of Winnie Mandela's trial for kidnapping. Hence the bare statistics do not tell all.
Statistics on sources say something about balance, but not automatically about bias. A one-source story is unbalanced, but it need not be biased. If the governor of the central bank announces a rise in interest rates, no other voice is required because it is a straight news item. (Good journalistic practice might suggest that a comment from the political parties and independent experts would be helpful.) On other hand, coverage of political violence that only quoted from one party would probably be biased.
Monitors will also analyse the content of voter education material to ensure that no party political message is being conveyed. Often they will wish to compare the treatment of the same stories in different language services. In Africa especially, there is often a quite different content to broadcasts in the colonial language - English, French or Portuguese - and indigenous languages. The former will, to some extent, be for external consumption. Broadcasters and politicians often assume that no independent monitor is paying attention to what they say in their own languages. Hence one of the benefits of media monitoring.
To some extent all analysis of bias is subjective. However, various methods can be used to obtain as objective an assessment as possible. Media monitors will measure bias by comparing media reporting to their own understanding of events derived from a variety of sources. One way of doing this is 'source monitoring': the media monitors themselves attend an important newsworthy event such as a political rally or a press conference, in order to see how media coverage compares with their own perceptions. The Internet has made it easier for monitors to compare domestic coverage with international reporting on their country. The two sometimes bear little relation to each other.
Discourse analysis: evaluating the implicit messages contained within media coverage is at the same time important, difficult and highly contentious. Under this heading comes all the subtleties of language and visuals that convey a message that is understood by the audience, but sometimes not in a conscious manner. This can be most clearly shown in the use of words, whether in print or broadcast. For example, pro-government media may have the President 'stating' something, while his opponent only 'alleges'. Reporting does not have to be inaccurate to be an improper influence on the audience's perceptions. In South Africa before the 1994 election, for example, monitors noticed that reports of ANC demonstrations always mentioned the amount of litter left behind by the participants. The message was that the ANC was disruptive and irresponsible. Foreign news items can be used to encourage a particular interpretation of domestic news. In Malawi in 1994, coverage of opposition parties on the state broadcaster was placed alongside news of the Rwandan genocide. The subliminal message was that an end to one-party 'stability' would lead to bloodshed.
Television has a whole complex visual vocabulary. Figures who are regarded as authoritative - such as incumbent politicians - may be portrayed at an upward angle, while others are filmed at a level angle or from above. Figures in authority will more often address the camera directly, while others will address an unseen interviewer to one side of the camera and thus will not address the viewer directly. Ordinary interviewees - opposition members, trade unionists, the public - will usually be interviewed in the open air. Government members will be seen in their office, often shuffling papers and apparently engaged in some urgent and important activity. An office background tends to emphasise the authority and expertise of the interviewee. And so on.
Even the graphics and logos that accompany a news broadcast may convey a message. The graphic on South African television for the running story of political negotiations in 1993 showed two white men and one black man. This was later changed to one white man, one off-white woman and one black man. Neither of these reflected the actual composition of the negotiations. More blatantly, in the Zimbabwean 2000 elections, a special current affairs programme that run through the campaign period had as its logo the tower at the Great Zimbabwe ruins - exactly the same as the symbol of the ruling party.99
An essential part of the methodology of media monitoring is how the findings are reported. Practice varies from project to project. A common model is to report after the election is over, in the manner of many ordinary election monitoring projects. The big drawback of this approach is that, although it may provide ammunition for later disputes about whether the election was fair or not, it will have no influence on the actual coverage. Monitoring projects that report while the campaign is in progress will hope to have a positive impact on the quality of journalism. The exact intervals between reports will vary. Once a week is a common one, but a monitoring project in Kenya in 1997 began monthly well in advance of the election and then went weekly as the campaign hotted up. In Zimbabwe in 2000, reports initially came out weekly and then daily in the last two weeks of the campaign. In every case, however, monitoring projects will produce final reports when the election is over setting out their overall findings.
See ARTICLE 19: Media Monitoring Manual for fuller details of media monitoring methodology. Media Monitoring - Malawi and Media Monitoring - Bosnia illustrate different media monitoring approaches in practice. Russia: EIM Report 2000, Tanzania: Media Monitoring Report, 2000 and Zimbabwe: Media Monitoring Report, 2000 are different recent examples of media monitoring reports.
