ELECTIONS 2000 MEDIA MONITORING PROJECT Interim Report 1. Summary of Findings

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1 ELECTIONS 2000 MEDIA MONITORING PROJECT Interim Report 1. Summary of Findings The public-funded media largely failed to discharge their duty to inform the electorate impartially about the candidates and issues in the 2000 presidential, parliamentary and civic elections. Despite the clear provisions of Section 53 of the Elections Act, some of these media took an explicit editorial position in favour of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi, while all gave far more time to CCM candidates than those of any other party. National Television (TVT), for example, gave no news coverage to any opposition candidate for the Union presidency in the last month before the elections. This bias in the publicly funded media was even more pronounced in Zanzibar with potentially more serious effects, given the absence of any independent media in the Isles. The performance of the privately-owned media was uneven. All broadcast media gave more time to the candidates of the ruling party than of any of the opposition parties. However, in some cases there appeared to be a genuine attempt to balance the coverage, while other media were unapologetic in their overwhelming bias in favour of the government and CCM. Taking the private and public media together, the weight of coverage was overwhelmingly in favour of the CCM. The ruling party received per cent of news coverage on radio and television from the beginning of October until the election. The next largest share was that of the Civic United Front, with per cent. Across all the media, virtually without exception, the voice of the people was scarcely reflected in the course of the election campaign. Electoral coverage largely consisted of regurgitating the words of politicians, rather than examining issues of concern to the electorate. In particular, most media have given little or no attention to women candidates in the elections, or to issues especially affecting women. A notable exception was Majira newspaper. Publicly-funded broadcast media gave free direct access broadcasts to the contesting political parties on an equal basis. Paid coverage of party political events was also available, as were shorter campaign messages. However, at least two paid broadcasts of the Civic United Front in Zanzibar were not broadcast in full by Sauti ya Tanzania Zanzibar. Voter education was generally inadequate across the Tanzanian media although the primary responsibility for that failure lies with the electoral authorities rather than the media themselves. It was a clear case of too little, too late. 2. Background to the project The Elections 2000 Media Monitoring Project is a joint undertaking by four partners: the Media Council of Tanzania, Media Institute of Southern Africa-Tanzania Chapter, 1

2 Tanzania Media Women Association and the United Nations Association. ARTICLE 19, the Global Campaign for Free Expression, which is based in Johannesburg and London, provided initial training and technical support, as well as channelling funding from the Swedish International Development Agency. The bulk of funding for the project was provided by a basket of donors comprising Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Canada, France, Switzerland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands. Preparatory work on the project began on 1 June Training took place in July and monitoring started in August. Monitors are based at six centres: Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Dodoma, Mwanza, Arusha and Zanzibar. 3. Methodology A total of six radio stations, seven television stations and 15 newspapers were monitored. Not all the media in the country were monitored because of inadequate resources. Monitors completed a standard form for all broadcast news bulletins, as well as for all election-related stories in the newspapers being monitored. The form recorded basic statistical information: number, duration and order of items, named sources of stories, whether or not there was a sound bite or direct quotation, and whether an item was broadly favourable to one party or opposed to one party (only negative stories were classified as opposed a story could favour one party without opposing another). This statistical information was entered into a database and forms the basis of the statistical findings presented in this report. (Because of teething problems with the database, this interim report only presents statistics from the latter stages of the campaign from 1 October onwards. A full statistical summary will be available in our final report.) In addition to collecting this basic statistical data, monitors also made a preliminary analysis of the qualitative content of each item. These analyses were reviewed on a weekly basis and incorporated into regular public reports. Reports were published once in August, twice in September and four times in October. In addition, a newsletter, Election Monitor, was produced regularly in English and Kiswahili to publicize the project s findings. It was the aim of the Media Monitoring Project to enter into a dialogue with media practitioners about our findings. We welcome the general receptiveness that the media have shown towards our work. Monitoring will continue until 15 November, in order to observe coverage of the results and the political aftermath of the elections. 4. Applicable standards When monitoring and measuring media output, it is important to be clear what standards the media are to be judged against. Standards of behaviour for the media in elections have been set out at three levels, which form the basis of the assessment that the Media Monitoring Project is engaged in. International standards: International law and practice has over the years developed a clear set of principles governing the expected performance of media in elections. The significance of this is that the media are one of the main sources of information 2

3 that allow voters to make a free democratic choice. These standards were recently summarized by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression in his 1999 report: There are several fundamental principles which, if promoted and respected, enhance the right to seek, receive and impart information. These principles are: a monopoly or excessive concentration of ownership of media in the hands of a few is to be avoided in the interest of developing a plurality of viewpoints and voices; State-owned media have a responsibility to report on all aspects of national life and to provide access to a diversity of viewpoints; State-owned media must not be used as a communication or propaganda organ for one political party or as an advocate for the Government to the exclusion of all other parties and groups The Special Rapporteur then went on to list a series of obligations on the State to ensure that the media are given the widest possible latitude in order to achieve the most fully informed electorate possible : There should not be bias or discrimination in media coverage; Censorship of election programmes should not be allowed. Media should be exempt from legal liability for reporting provocative statements and a right of reply should be provided; There should be a clear distinction between news coverage of functions of government office and functions as a party candidate; Air time for direct access programmes should be granted on a fair and nondiscriminatory basis; Programmes provide an opportunity for candidates to debate each other and for journalists to question them; Media should engage in voter education; Programmes should target traditionally disadvantaged groups, which may include women and ethnic and religious minorities. Tanzanian Law: Part of the list of standards set out by the Special Rapporteur is already in force as part of the laws of Tanzania. Section 53 of the Elections Act provides strict guidelines for the government-owned media. It says that political parties contesting and election and candidates for the offices of President and Vice- President shall have the right to use the state radio and television broadcasting service during the official period of the election campaign. It continues: Every print media owned by the government which publishes information relating to the electoral process shall be guided by the principle of total impartiality and shall refrain from any discrimination in relation to any candidate journalistically and in the amount of space dedicated to him. Code of Conduct: These legal provisions apply to the government or state media, for the simple reason that these are funded out of public money and therefore belong to all Tanzanians regardless of political persuasion. The same principle does not, however, apply to privately-owned media, which are free to choose their own editorial policy. However, private media are still guided by the ethical standards of the journalistic profession. In July in Morogoro, under the auspices of the Media Council, 3

4 media practitioners and other stakeholders drew up a code of conduct to govern media coverage of the 2000 elections. The code of conduct is appended to this report and provides the standard against which the Media Monitoring Project measured the professionalism of all media, public or private. 5. Voter Education One of the most important functions of the media before and during an election campaign is voter education. This means explaining to voters how to register to vote, what the vote means including which offices are being elected and how and where to vote. It is also important to stress to voters the fact that their vote is secret. Voter education should target in particular disadvantaged sections of society who may be less well informed about the voting process and therefore be less likely to participate. This means, for example, that voter education must be aimed at the illiterate or people with disabilities who may have special difficulties in voting. It should also be targeted at women, who tend to be marginalized in the political process. It is essential that all voter education be politically impartial that is, that it should not push the electorate towards voting for one or other political party. Responsibility for voter education rests primarily with the National Electoral Commission (and the Zanzibar Electoral Commission), although NGOs produced their own voter education material and the media themselves were free to do the same. There was not a problem with bias in the content of voter education material (although sometimes placing such slots in close proximity to party material might have been misleading). An early problem, however, was that voter education did not start until too late. Thus voters were educated on the importance of registering at the last minute in August, instead of earlier up to July at the latest. Similarly, an article in Mtanzania on 18 August gave guidance on the process to candidates and political parties the same day that they were supposed to return their forms to the NEC. Nevertheless, Mtanzania was a consistent exception to the lack of interest in voter education on the part of the press. In October, TVT ran a good tele-drama on the importance of women participating in the election as candidates. Unfortunately the nomination deadline had long past so the programme s practical value was minimal. RTD s special programme Manena Hayo was also aimed at providing voter education. However, its satirical style of presentation meant that it did not do this very effectively. The programme leaned on the side of the ruling party. 6. Direct Access Coverage Direct access is a general term to describe those aspects of media coverage that are under the editorial control of the parties or candidates, rather than the media themselves. This in turn can be divided into free coverage such as party election broadcasts and paid advertising. Under Section 53 of the Elections Act the NEC required the state broadcasting services to provide a series of 30-minute direct access slots to the different political parties on an equal basis, free of charge. 4

5 An amendment to the Zanzibar Election Act earlier this year required the Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) to prepare directives to guide government-owned news media to ensure that they accord equal opportunity to candidates of all parties. These directives require TVZ and STZ to give space to the parties to broadcast directly to the voters. A series of 20-minute slots were allocated free of charge to all the contesting parties. Slots were rotated, with each party having two broadcasts a week. Parties may make their own slots, provided they are of broadcast standard, or they were recorded free of charge in TVZ studios. The broadcasters previewed the pre-recorded slots that the parties submitted to them to make sure that there was nothing in them that was potentially unlawful. If there was material that could expose the broadcasters to legal action, they would ask the party to cut it. If agreement could not be reached between broadcaster and party, then ZEC will rule on the matter. In one case, ZEC ruled that a CUF broadcast contained unlawful material. STZ rebroadcast a previous CUF slot in its place, while a new television broadcast was recorded. ZEC also instructed the electronic media to give the parties the chance to buy air time to broadcast their own political messages or campaign events. This was charged at the rate of Tshs8,000 per minute on television and Tshs5-6,000 on radio. Of the opposition parties, only CUF took advantage of the opportunity for paid coverage. However, the party complained that STZ did not always broadcast its events in full. On one occasion STZ stopped broadcasting a campaign rally during a speech by CUF s candidate for the Zanzibar presidency, Seif Shariff Hamad. In another case STZ stopped broadcasting a rally in Pemba only minutes after it had started. TVZ broadcast short election messages before and after the main evening news. CCM messages were always broadcast before the news, CUF messages at the end, often after the sports news. The managing director of ITV informed the Media Monitoring Project that coverage of campaign rallies would be screened by her station at a cost of US$4000 per broadcast. At least two parties have declined to take advantage of this offer because the charges were too high. Mtanzania took a positive initiative in serializing the election manifestoes of the political parties a good response to articles 3 and 4 of the Code of Conduct requiring the media to respond to the needs of voters and provide relevant information. Two private television stations, DTV and CTN, combined their coverage to produce a series of programmes under the head Tambua Chama Changu (Know My Party). This consisted of a series of direct air time for the four Union presidential candidates, broadcast almost simultaneously on the two channels. A general problem with direct access coverage, paid and unpaid, in both private and public media was a failure to identify it as such. Any material that was paid advertising, advertorial or free direct access for political parties should have been clearly identified as such. 7. Editorial coverage the public media The obligation on the publicly-funded media to give equitable coverage to all parties and candidates flows from the fact that these media often called state media or government media are owned by the people as a whole. Hence it is unacceptable 5

6 for them to be seen to favour one party over another. This obligation to be impartial is clearly spelled out in Section 53 of the Elections Act. Yet it is an obligation that is not very clearly understood. How else can one interpret the election day editorial column in the Sunday News headlined Give it to Ben Mkapa? In late August, the NEC had a meeting with the heads of the publicly-owned media about their coverage of the election. It was explained that they were required to be neutral and give access to all parties. Radio Tanzania Dar es Salaam (RTD) introduced a number of special programmes for the election period: the current affairs programmes Majira, Harakati and a commentary programme Mazungumzo baada ya Habari. There were also two new programmes, Tuambie and Maneno Hayo. The ZEC had a similar meeting with the Zanzibar state media. The immediate effect was a significant increase in coverage of the opposition in the Zanzibar media, although much of this was in the form of paid coverage. The bias in the publicly-funded media in Zanzibar was no greater than in its mainland counterparts. However, its effects were potentially all the more serious because of the absence of any real alternative. The only broadcast media, STZ and Television Zanzibar (TVZ), are government-controlled, as is one of the two weekly newspapers, Nuru. (The other, Jukwaa, is owned by a CCM supporter and has an editorial line fervently in support of the ruling party.) In these circumstances combined with the expectation that Zanzibar would see the most closely-contested election there was a particular importance in the government media taking an impartial line. Yet the news coverage on both STZ and TVZ heavily favoured the CCM candidate for the Zanzibar presidency, Amani Abeid Karume. What coverage was given to opposition candidates notably Seif Shariff Hamad of CUF was not necessarily inaccurate. However, the tiny share given to the opposition hardly reflected the closely fought electoral campaign. On TVZ in October, Amani Abeid Karume received 3867 seconds of news coverage, compared with 1082 seconds for Seif Shariff Hamad. On STZ over the same period the allocation of time was fairer, although the CCM candidate still received half as much time again as his rival: 974 seconds, compared with 622 seconds. In addition to what monitors categorized as pro-ccm, there was frequent mention of the government s claimed economic achievements notably the launching of the Free Port Zone. Although such material was not explicit campaign material, it had the clear message that voters should re-elect the CCM. The situation was complicated by the fact that the incumbent president of Zanzibar was not standing for re-election. Hence he was able to be quoted frequently on the government s achievements, without this entering the tally of campaign coverage. A further interesting observation on campaign coverage in Zanzibar is that it focused almost exclusively on the Zanzibar polls themselves. Almost no attention was paid to any of the candidates for the Union presidency for which Zanzibaris were also voting. Hence they were presented with almost no information on which to make their choice. TVZ gave Benjamin Mkapa 1285 seconds of news time more than Seif Shariff Hamad but devoted no time at all to any of the opposition candidates for the Union presidency. Likewise, STZ gave Mkapa 546 seconds and other candidates none. The print media in Zanzibar presented an interesting contrast. The government controlled Nuru newspaper was generally sober in tone and gave coverage to CUF. (However, as with radio and television, CCM stories were always given priority.) 6

7 This contrasted with the only privately-owned Zanzibar paper, Jukwaa, which ran a series of exaggerated anti-cuf, pro-ccm stories. Radio Tanzania Dar es Salaam (RTD) and Television Tanzania (TVT) did not present a particularly positive contrast to their Zanzibari counterparts. The main difference was that these were not the sole news source for the audiences that they served. It is an unfortunate reflection on the overall bias of their coverage that reporting the incident in which five CUF supporters were shot by police significantly increased the party s share of the coverage that week. TVT, in October, gave no coverage to any opposition candidate for the Union presidency, while Benjamin Mkapa received 1466 seconds. The sole alternative voice was the CUF Zanzibar presidential candidate, Seif Shariff Hamad, with 45 seconds. This is an extraordinary dereliction of the station s public service obligation. RTD did give some coverage to opposition candidates 791 seconds to Ibrahim Lipumba, who had the largest share but this paled beside the 8608 seconds devoted to Mkapa. Coverage of the political parties on RTD displayed an even greater discrepancy: CCM received 12,083 seconds of coverage. CUF, with the next largest share, had just 837 seconds. One way in which RTD attempted to avoid the problem of bias was simply not to cover the election at all, especially in the early weeks of the campaign. Some days an entire news bulletin would consist of foreign news stories. It was quite extraordinary that the morning bulletin on 30 October, the day after the election, carried only foreign news. The bulletin entirely ignored not only the election results, but also the dramatic (and embarrassing) events in Zanzibar. Most extreme was RTD Dodoma, which carried no election stories at all between 17 and 30 September. Several other devices were used with the effect of increasing the coverage of the incumbent party. One was the frequent reporting of the activities of Anna Mkapa, First Lady and wife of one of the candidates. (A similar approach was taken by the Zanzibar media in relation to Shadya Karume, the wife of the CCM candidate.) Other wives of presidential candidates were nowhere to be seen. Another device was the coverage given to the CCM vice-presidential candidate, Omar Ali Juma. He alone of the presidential running mates received significant mention indeed the profile of the others was so low as to be almost invisible. On occasion, however, RTD appeared to go out of its way to skew its coverage in favour of the CCM. A case in point was the rebroadcasting of sections of a BBC debate in September featuring the Zanzibar presidential candidates. RTD s version of what had originally been a well-balanced debate overwhelmingly featured the ruling party candidate, Amani Abeid Karume. In light of CCM attempts to portray CUF as a party of violence, it was unfortunate that RTD did not broadcast Seif Shariff Hamad s clear pledge to maintain peace. 8. Editorial coverage the private media The obligations on the privately-owned media are different from those that are funded out of public money. Pluralistic media, owned by a variety of different interests and expressing a variety of different political views, are crucial to the proper working of the democratic process. It follows that there can be few regulations imposed from outside the media should report the election campaign as they see fit. However, broadcasters in particular do have certain public obligations that derive from the fact that they operate according to licences granted to them by a public body, the Tanzania 7

8 Broadcasting Commission. It would thus be a matter of some concern if there were significant bias in the broadcast media in favour of one party or another. One broadcaster, Abood Aziz, the proprietor of ATV in Morogoro, announced shortly before the election that no opposition party or candidate would receive airtime on his station. This is apparently in breach of the Tanzania Broadcasting Act of 1993, which requires broadcasters to present news in a balanced and impartial manner. However, it remains to be seen whether the Tanzania Broadcasting Commission will take action on the matter. A refreshing contrast was provided by radio stations such as Radio Free Africa, which was generally much more balanced in the time devoted to the different parties and candidates. RFA gave almost equal coverage to the four presidential candidates in October. Remarkably, it was the incumbent who received least time although only by a margin of five seconds. In its coverage of the political parties, RFA was more skewed towards CCM with 545 seconds it had nearly twice as much coverage as the Tanzania Labour Party, the next most reported party. Radio One leaned more towards CCM in its coverage. The station gave Mkapa 255 seconds of airtime, compared with 94 seconds for Cheyo and 48 seconds for Lipumba. Coverage of CCM in general accounted for 471 seconds. CUF received 171 seconds and the United Democratic Party 94 seconds.this was explained by Radio One executives as being a consequence of the fact that the ruling party had the largest number of candidates for the parliamentary and civic elections. However, an encouraging aspect of the coverage by both Radio One and Radio Free Africa was the demonstrable improvement in balance over the monitoring period. Star Television gave seven times as much news coverage to Benjamin Mkapa as it did to Ibrahim Lipumba of CUF, who had the next largest share (815 seconds and 132 seconds respectively). In fact, Lipumba s coverage accounted for all the time given to CUF on Star Television, whereas CCM received nearly 400 seconds more time on top of that devoted to Mkapa. Independent Television gave a somewhat larger share of news coverage to opposition presidential candidates, although it gave more time to John Cheyo (1296 seconds) and Augustine Mrema (900 seconds) than to Ibrahim Lipumba (248 seconds). But again Benjamin Mkapa had by far the largest share, with 3448 seconds. Time devoted to political parties was somewhat more even, with CCM receiving 4588 seconds, CUF 2417 seconds, TLP 1687 seconds and UDP 1248 seconds. However, an interesting dimension of the ITV coverage was the attention it devoted to the Zanzibar election. Seif Shariff Hamad was easily the most extensively reported opposition candidate, with 3016 seconds actually more than Amani Abeid Karume who had 2856 seconds. Reporting of gender issues was weak throughout the campaign. The Code of Conduct for Election Reporting, in Article 22, enjoins journalists to refrain from coverage that is biased and reinforces existing prejudices against women. It also calls on journalists to encourage women candidates by raising public awareness of the importance of women s participation in public life. It may sometimes be difficult for journalists to set the agenda on this issue, when politicians do not generally do so, but the media also missed opportunities that were presented to them. One such opportunity was the statement by a CUF candidate that Women will remain our lovers. This was in response to a question about why his party had nothing about women s development in its manifesto. Only two papers picked up the story. Nipashe ran a page-three story with an unclear headline: Ashindwa kuwajibu 8

9 waandishi ( He fails to answer journalists ). Mzalendo ran the reference in the tail of a lead story stating that CUF praised President Mkapa for tax collection. Almost alone among the media, Majira provided special attention to women candidates in a series of profiles and interviews. Almost without exception, election stories consisted of reports that relayed the promises of candidates about what they would do when elected to office. What were entirely lacking were stories that looked at what was the position of each candidate or party on a given issue. A story or report that presented, for example, the different positions of the parties on the economy would be more helpful to voters in making a choice than simply regurgitating the parties campaign messages. However, an example of more imaginative and informative election coverage was the series of profiles of parliamentary candidates run by Majira. These profiles improved as the campaign progressed, starting with a focus on the life and education and personality of the individual, but increasingly concentrating on the main issues concerning voters in their respective constituencies. Another good initiative was ITV s 40-minute special interview with the CUF and CCM presidential candidates for the Isles, conducted by a team of lecturers from the Tanzania School of Journalism. By contrast, an example of more imaginative election-related journalism in very poor taste was a 40-minute special programme aired by ATV. It contained a series of bloody and violent images from conflicts around Africa to illustrate the danger of undermining peace. It cited unidentified political movements in Tanzania that were aimed at disrupting the long-established peace prevailing in the country. This was the worst type of election journalism since its implication was to challenge the legitimacy of the election process itself opposition being equated with subversion. It also lacked the courage of its convictions: by failing to name those alleged to threaten violence it did not give them an opportunity to reply. ITV ran similar films, with a link to the election campaign that was only slightly less explicit. Torture, killing and chaos in countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone was attributed to power-hungry individuals. ATV s approach to the whole election was curious. In the early weeks, along with Star TV, it had apparently decided to ignore the whole process a decision that might have been related to its proprietor s failure in the CCM preferential polls. However, once Mr Abood was installed as a CCM campaign manager, his television station followed suit. As well as its luridly violent coverage the station also ran an inaccurate story about CUF supporters running riot in Morogoro. CUF was not given an opportunity to reply to a story that damaged it in the public perception. Some of the very worst journalism, sadly but not surprisingly, was to be found in the overt party organs. Uhuru of September 19, alone among the media, claimed that a rally at Bumbwini by Seif Shariff Hamad had been abandoned because of a low turn-out in fact the police had stopped CUF supporters from attending the meeting by blocking roads and searching them. The same paper, again alone, failed to report the incident in which police shot five CUF supporters. A story on Septembe 18, however, managed to suggest that CUF was making preparations for war or acts of treason on election day. The partisanship of Uhuru is not the issue since it is a party paper, its editorial line will no doubt favour that party. But this does not absolve it from any responsibility to adhere to journalistic ethics. If the threat of violence from CUF was felt to be a real one, then the responsibility of the media would be to report such threats in a sober manner not to play up the possibility of violence. This is the clear guidance given by Article 6 of the Code of Conduct: 9

10 The media should report hate speeches that are likely to incite or provoke a breach of the peace but should at the same time expose and take a stand against hate speech in their editorials and/or analytical articles. If, on the other hand, the threat of violence was not a serious one, then it is unclear what the paper was doing reporting it in the first place. Positive examples of how responsible journalism can contribute to lowering the political temperature could be seen at various points in papers such as Majira, Mwananchi, The African, Mtanzania and Tanzania Leo, in particular their editorials against the use of violence. A general problem throughout the media was a frequent failure to rely on more than a single identifiable source for stories. Out of 2,888 stories monitored in all media, no fewer than 2,450 had only a single source. One hundred and thirty-four had no source at all. Only nine stories in all media had more than four sources. The significance of these figures is that the balance in stories derives from the fact that they are based on information that reflects different interests or points of view. Journalists were generally content to repeat information generated by someone else (usually a politician) rather than to synthesize that information and offer some analysis. A total of 57 stories in the print media (out of 1161 election-related stories) were entirely lacking an identifiable source. The worst culprits were Majira (15 stories out of 188) and Uhuru (12 stories out of 261). Radio generally did a much better job of sourcing stories. Only 46 out of 822 monitored radio stories had no identifiable source. This failure was almost entirely a result of the lamentable performance of RTD, which ran 42 unsourced stories. Concealing a source is a legitimate practice in extremely sensitive stories where the identity of the source should be protected for his or her own protection. As a general rule, however, sources should be identified in order to reassure readers that the story is credible. Yet the Media Monitoring Project noted many stories where reliable sources that is, no identifiable sources at all formed the only basis for a story. A particularly serious example was a story run by ITV and Radio One (both under the management of IPP Media) on 15 October, repeated the following day. The story claimed that there was a possibility that the election would not go ahead because some areas had not received election equipment. There was no interview with the National Electoral Commission or any other relevant authority. The basis for the story was a reporter s observation of electoral equipment in an NEC godown the significance of which was not clear. Uhuru ran unsubstantiated and extraordinary claims that CUF was buying registration cards for Tshs300,000 each. Unsourced stories of any kind are undesirable sensational and unsubstantiated claims of this type are potentially extremely dangerous. Another general problem was the use of sensational headlines. A particularly striking example came in the October 10 issue of Majira, with a story headlined CCM yala matapishi yake CCM eats its vomit. The story itself is a sober account of the reinstatement of a CCM candidate who had been rejected in preferential polls in Msolwa. Whether the intention was to insult CCM, or simply to entice readers, the headline bore no relation to the story and was in poor taste. 10

11 9. Recommendations The Media Monitoring Project s final report, in addition to containing a much fuller account of the project s findings, will also develop a series of recommendations for future media coverage of election issues. The following is a series of initial recommendations for consideration by the relevant authorities. The National Electoral Commission should indicate its disquiet with the fact that publicly-funded media have openly favoured one political party in the elections, in breach of the terms of the Elections Act. Editors and other responsible figures should be reminded that such flagrantly unlawful behaviour could leave the election results open to challenge. Publicly-funded media must be detached from the control of the government of the day and desist from taking an editorial line in favour of any political party. The Tanzania Broadcasting Commission should develop clearer standards on the responsibilities of private broadcasters in covering election issues, with the aim of ensuring the equitable coverage of all political parties on the airwaves. Media houses and training institutions are urged to review the full findings of the Media Monitoring Project in order to develop programmes to upgrade the skills and professional standards of journalists well in advance of the next elections. The National Electoral Commission should embark on a programme of voter education in advance of the next presidential, parliamentary and civic elections, in order to ensure that such information is thoroughly disseminated through the media in good time Released in Dar es Salaam on November 3,2000 The Media Monitoring Project is stationed at the Media Council of Tanzania at Makumbusho along Ali Hassan Mwinyi Road. For further enquiries, please contact: The Project Manager, P. O. Box Dar es Salaam Tel./Fax.: (255) or media-00@africaonline.co.tz 11