 Elections are crucial bedrock for democracies and enabling a free and open society. The role of the media in ensuring successful election is very crucial. All over the world the media is playing this important role of ensuring free and fair elections by working with all stakeholders across board.The media can strengthen the electoral process by providing independent information through impartial coverage.
Elections are crucial bedrock for democracies and enabling a free and open society. The role of the media in ensuring successful election is very crucial. All over the world the media is playing this important role of ensuring free and fair elections by working with all stakeholders across board.The media can strengthen the electoral process by providing independent information through impartial coverage. Three important elements come into play: access to information on the political process, ability to undertake investigate journalism and document lessons and experiences from the electioneering process. There are a lot of challenges and problems facing the media in the area of election coverage. Key among them is lack of access to real-time information, lack of capacity to undertake investigative journalism surrounding elections, use of ICTs in coverage, inability to produce balanced reports and to incorporate user content are some of the challenges and problems facing the media during elections coverage. In order to address some of these problems, African Elections Project was launched in September 2000 with the following key activity areas : v Training for senior editors, journalists and reporters v SMS application in coverage and monitoring v Election Guide for the Media v Information and Knowledge Online Portal v Knowledge products for the media v Media Content Monitoring With funding from OSISA - The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa www.osisa.org working with key partners, African Elections Project is providing coverage for the following countries in the Southern Africa region : |
