Naranchuluun
Presidential election media monitoring
In election period media has to strive for balanced and neutral reporting, giving a possibility to all involved sides to express their opinion and ensuring all running candidates and parties have equal access. Besides, a paid political advertising should be clearly and visibly marked so as not to mislead the audience. The elections cannot be fair if voters not objectively informed, well educated and they easily come on intricacy, influence and indications of the politicians.
Media is most used tool for political advertising, and most expensive way of campaigning according to the financial reports of the political parties submitted to the General Election Committee. A total of 1,560,676,400 (USD 1,322,607) tugrugs were spent by the parties during 2004 Parliament Election, and 68% were spent for political advertising, 1% was expenses for campaign events, and 31% was administrative expenses.
During election period following forms of media violation tend to occur - direct violation of media regulations in order to provide advantages to incumbent parties of candidates (for example, allocating free advertising time on an unequal basis), hidden advertising on behalf of incumbent candidates or parties, or against non-incumbent candidates or parties.
In June, 2004 during Parliament election Open Society Forum in cooperation with Voters Education Center and Globe International carried out a campaign finance monitoring, for the purpose of determining whether political parties misused the state resources in their election campaign, revealing ways and forms of such misuse, and turning a spotlight on the issue of diversion of public funds for election campaign purposes from their designated purposes.
According to the monitoring report, institutional and media resources were misused extensively and systematically during the election campaign, and state-owned media, as well as private media provided systematically unequal and biased coverage.
In particular, a hidden advertisement was extensive and systematic during the election campaign, which advertises a candidate, political party designating the informative material and portraying it as daily newspaper/radio/TV coverage with the intent of increasing or decreasing the popularity of some political power. Hidden advertising is a very effective campaigning instrument, because it is presented as daily newspaper/radio/TV coverage. The public has a very high amount of trust in mass media. The voter does not recognise a hidden advertisement as a politician’s wish with the help of money to polish his image or damage another party’s reputation, but sees it as an independent piece of journalism and believes this message.
Overall goal of the project is to promote fair election with equal conditions for all running candidates during the Presidential election, and to protect voters’ right to receive balanced information about Presidential candidates. Specific goal of the project is to monitor media coverage during Presidential election, and to analyze whether media outlets provided fair and balanced information or promoted a hidden advertisement in benefit of a particular candidate.
The monitoring will:
To analyze media if provide equal opportunities and equal time to all candidates to run election campaign
To assess appeared hidden advertisements
To make analizis if and how the existing laws are violated
Prepare recommendations for improvement of the existing regulations and laws.
Scope of monitoring are:
1. Monitoring the access of political parties/candidates to the state owned media:
a. quantitative – the number of appearances (or mention) (TV, radio) in all articles/programs
b. qualitative – the way of reporting according to the defined criteria.
2. Monitoring of access in the privately owned media:
a. quantitative – the number of appearances (or mention) (TV, radio, newspapers) in all articles/programs
b. qualitative – the way of reporting according to the defined criteria.
3. Quantitative monitoring of the paid advertising materials (newspapers, TV, radio)
a. cases of paid advertising
b. amount of advertising (cm², seconds)
4. Estimation of the approximate cost of the election campaign
For the final report the project will estimate the cost of the electoral campaign.
- Cost of paid advertising according to the price lists of the respective media;
- Cost of hidden advertising according to the price lists of the respective media, considering the volume discounts (the project team is aware that this will not reflect the actual cost of this material but will give an estimation of what this could have cost if these media services were paid for);
