01. 04. 2008

ELECTRONIC MEDIA'S PROMOTIONAL REPORTING ON THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS: RESEARCH BY INDEPENDENT JOURNALISTS' ASSOCIATION OF SERBIA AND MEDIA CENTER

Belgrade, April 1, 2008 (Danas) – The electronic and print media differed widely in their reporting on the presidential election in January of this year, with visible differences in the amount of reporting, the proportion of coverage of individual candidates and the context they were presented in – concludes the research "Conduct of the Media in Electoral Campaigns" performed by the Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia and the Belgrade Media Center.

The research shows that the campaign was most intensive at the television, with large volumes of commercial programmes and paid TV slots, while radio stations were less "interesting" to the candidates. The print media's coverage depended on the journalistic approach and widely differed depending on the editorial policy. Also, according to the results, the main characteristic of the campaign in the electronic media was its promotional approach, instead of the informative, critical or analytical angle.

The media analysis examined the weeks before the first and the second round of the presidential election, i.e. January 11-17 and January 25-31, encompassing all evening broadcasts between 18.00 and midnight on all six TV stations with national coverage (RTS, B92, RTV Pink, TV Fox, TV Avala and TV Kosava), the main news programmes of five radio stations with national coverage (Radio Belgrade First Channel, B92, Radio Index, Radio Fokus and Radio S), as well as eight daily newspapers (Danas, Politika, Blic, Vecernje Novosti, Kurir, Pres, Pravda and Gazeta).

Snjezana Milivojevic, a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences, pointed out that the total duration of the election-related broadcasts was 58 hours and 34 minutes, out of which RTS broadcast around 4 hours, B92 11 hours, TV Pink 9.5 hours, TV Fox 12 hours, TV Avala 9 hours and TV Kosava 12.5 hours. Of all these broadcasts, only around 7 hours of news programme were aired, she added, with B92 having the largest amount of such programmes.

- Regarding the radio stations, only three hours of news programme were aired, out of which 40 percent was broadcast on the Radio Belgrade First Channel, 30 percent on B92 and 30 percent on all other stations, explained Milivojevic.

Danas has published most of the texts about the second round of presidential elections – 131, followed by Pravda (117) and Blic (91).

Snjezana Milivojevic added that the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, Boris Tadic, was given a coverage of 3.5 hours of six TV stations' programme (28 minutes on the radio) and 54 percent of the space in the press, while the presidential candidate of the Serbian Radical Party, Tomislav Nikolic, was given a TV coverage of around 1.5 hours (15 minutes on the radio), and 46 percent in the press.

Democratic Party led the most expensive campaign

At the presentation of the research done by the Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia and the Media Center, Nemanja Nenadic, the executive director of Transparency Serbia, said that the value of political videos during the presidential election campaign was larger than the value of paid TV slots, and that TV Pink had most of the paid slots, followed by B92 and RTS, respectively. He added that it can be assumed that Democratic Party's campaign was most expensive, followed by the Serbian Radical Party's campaign. He pointed out that videos aired on RTS were more expensive than those aired on other TV stations, which, "if true, will require further analysis".