SABC gets ‘fair' rating for election coverage

23 Apr 2009

The latest Media Monitoring Africa report of 4-19 April 2009 has given the SABC News a high rating of “fair” coverage of the national and provincial elections.

SABC gets ‘fair' rating for election coverage

Making a finding on how the SABC treated different political parties during the run-up to the elections, the report reads: “For the period, 97% of all items monitored have been monitored as Fair according to the established standard.”

Earlier in the year and, following a standard tender process, MMA was awarded the tender to analyse SABC election coverage with a view to enhancing the corporation's credibility and openness in its treatment of election coverage.

“The overall purpose is to provide the SABC with independent research analysis of its coverage across its various radio and televisions services of the 2009 General Election through a comprehensive election media monitoring project,” said MMA's William Bird.

Amongst other key findings of the report was that during the period under review:

97% of all items monitored to date are considered to be fair.

The ANC received the majority of the party coverage (at 45%), followed by Cope with 18%, the DA with 11% and the IFP 4%.

The ANC once again dominates the SABC's political party coverage.

The majority of election coverage was attributed to the NPA's impending decision regarding Jacob Zuma's charges and the eventual dropping of these charges.

Across the SABC services there are differences in percentages of coverage of political parties, indicative of diversity in the various SABC services.

The role of the SABC as the public service broadcaster is considered the most vital during an election period. As the biggest broadcaster in the country with the greatest audience, the power and potential of the SABC is immense.

Balanced, accurate, diverse and fair...

SABC group executive in charge of News & Current Affairs expressed satisfaction with the findings. “In addition to its capacity and audience share, the specific role of the SABC as the public broadcaster means that it has even greater responsibility to the public to report the elections in a manner that is balanced, accurate, diverse and fair”, said Snuki Zikalala.

MMA had been contracted to monitor all television news bulletins of SABC1, 2 and 3. In addition to the above, all special election and additional ad hoc live programmes, current affairs programmes dealing with election-related issues, plus Morning Live current affairs content, was also monitored.

For Radio the following services were monitored: three news bulletins per day on all SABC stations (Public Broadcasting Services & Public Commercial Services) seven days a week and all current affairs programmes on PBS stations.

“Again, while this is only the fifth report, it is to be noted that this is a positive indication of elections coverage thus far”, the report said.