Mozambique: Report Published on Media Election Coverage

An independent report on media coverage of the 2009 campaign for Mozambique's presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections, requested by the National Union of Journalists (SNJ) found that the ruling Frelimo Party received the greatest share of the coverage, not only on publicly owned media, such as Mozambican Television (TVM) and Radio Mozambique, but also in the print media, regardless of their ownership and political stance.

 

Presenting the report in Maputo on Tuesday, one of the researchers, Eduardo Nhanale, said that, in the first 20 days of the campaign TVM's daily "Campaign Diary" devoted 45.4 per cent of its time to Frelimo, 34.1 per cent to the main opposition party, Renamo, and 15 per cent to the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), which resulted from the split in Renamo the previous year. (The remaining 5.5 per cent was divided among the 16 minor parties standing in the elections.)

 

For Radio Mozambique, the monitors took the two daily news programmes devoted entirely to the campaign (broadcast at 13.30 and 21.00) for 20 days selected at random - 10 in September and 10 in October.

 

The analysis showed that Frelimo occupied 37.6 per cent of the time, the MDM 30.7 percent, and Renamo only 9.6 per cent. Just over 22 per cent of the coverage went on the 16 minor parties, a much higher percentage than TVM gave them.

 

The report considered that the radio's tone towards all the competing parties was broadly neutral, while TVM was largely positive towards Frelimo. Of all the references deemed positive in the TVM broadcasts, 86.6 per cent concerned Frelimo, 7.5 per cent Renamo, and three per cent the MDM. The monitors deemed that most of the references by TVM to Renamo and the MDM were neutral or negative.

 

For the print media, the report looked at two daily papers ("Noticias" and "Diario de Mocambique") and four weeklies ("Savana", "Zambeze", "Magazine Independente" and "Publico"), and the space they gave to the three presidential candidates - Armando Guebuza of Frelimo, Afonso Dhlakama of Renamo and Daviz Simango of the MDM.

 

In all the papers, regardless of their political line, there were more articles on Guebuza than on either of the opposition candidates. Even the paper most hostile to Frelimo, "Zambeze", gave 48.8 per cent of its presidential campaign coverage to Guebuza, as against 30.5 per cent for Simango and 20.7 per cent for Dhlakama.

 

Thus "Zambeze" had slightly more coverage of Guebuza than the generally pro-Frelimo Maputo daily "Noticias", where the figures were 47.1 per cent for Guebuza and 26.5 per cent for each of the opposition candidates.

 

But the report suffers from severe methodological problems. It counts the number of minutes broadcast for each party, without any analysis of what the parties were doing to earn those minutes.

 

The best journalists in the world cannot cover campaigns that do not exist, and in the first week of the campaign, there was no Renamo presidential campaign. Afonso Dhlakama did not set foot on the campaign trail in those days. This clearly pushed the radio and television statistics in favour of Frelimo.

 

In its section on TVM, the report claims that for Guebuza and Dhlakama "pieces on their rallies were identified in all 20 days of the campaign analysed". This is completely impossible - since these were the first 20 days of the campaign, and there were no Dhlakama rallies in the first week.

 

Furthermore, Dhlakama ignored huge swathes of the country during his campaign, and concentrated overwhelmingly on the province where he is living, Nampula. Whatever the merits or demerits of this as an electoral tactic, it certainly had a negative impact on media coverage.

 

The report's analysis of the written press was skewed towards the weeklies. It looked at all six issues of "Savana" and of "Zambeze" published during the campaign but at only five issues of "Noticias" and just four of "Diario de Mocambique".

 

Thus it analysed 100 per cent of the "Savana" campaign coverage but only 10 per cent of the coverage by "Diario de Mocambique" - four issues out of the 40 that were published during the campaign.

 

The claim that there were no articles on Dhlakama in "Diario de Mocambique" thus refers to only four days, and a different four days might have given a different result.

 

The report fails to note that "Diario de Mocambique" is published in Beira, which doubtless explains why there was a higher percentage of articles on Simango in this paper than in any of the others analysed. Simango happens to be mayor of Beira, a pertinent fact not mentioned by the report.

 

- June 29, 2010 by AIM

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Source: allafrica.com/stories/201006291113.html (accessed on 30.06.10)