CeSID`s Report On Media Monitoring Before The Re-Run Presidential Elections
(Until the beginning of pre-elections silence)

CeSID again monitored behaviour of the media in this cycle of pre-elections campaign for the re-run presidential elections in Serbia.

The following media were monitored:

- Printed: “Politika”, “Danas”, “Vecernje novosti”, “Blic” and “Nacional”.
- Electronic: RTB – “Dnevnik 2”, RTB – “Electoral Chronicle” (6 days), Studio B – “News at 19:00”, BK TV – “Telefakt” and TV Pink – “Infotop” (as well as the evening programme between 19:00 and 22:00 hours)

Judging by the media coverage, the monitors’ impression was that the elections WERE GOING TO BE HELD SOMEWHERE ELSE: a mild campaign of presidential candidates was covered by the adequate treatment in the media, routinely, side tracked and almost “half-heartedly”. The media reported only what they “had to”, what was required by professional decency towards the candidates and (almost completely indolent) public and – not a bit more. With rare exceptions, the analytical comments of journalists and experts were missing. Altogether, behaviour of the candidates during the campaign dictated the contents in the media. There were no “rhetoric appetisers” and no intolerance speech (which marked the campaign for the September elections), excluding the almost unison attacks on the “virtual” co-runner in the presidential contest – the Government of Serbia and its Premier. Apparently, the tools of the “positive” campaign were exhausted and turned into the endless repetition of the same promises and “threats” (through commercial TV clips and radio jingles), which, most probably, the candidates themselves no longer believed in. This is well illustrated by the fact that the candidates have hardly used the terms reserved for presentation of their programmes in the “state-controlled” electronic media – they did not have enough material to fill the two-minute time reserved.

Once again, a model of the media reporting was adjusted to the “objectivism”, i.e. careful equidistance from all candidates, sometimes even including disregard for certain events related to the campaign (this was being determined by comparative monitoring of the media that were not a subject of this analysis, e.g. Radio and Television “B92”).

Once more, the behaviour of the state controlled media was characteristic, since the reporting on presidential “campaign” was marginalized as much as possible. Consequently, for instance, the RTB “Dnevnik 2” had an average 2 news items per programme reporting on activities of presidential candidates (lasting in average 38 seconds per item, while on November 20th and November 25th, there was no SINGLE item). The time unused by the immediate actors was “compensated” by the side, indirect actors, who were the subject of an average of 2.7 news items (lasting in average 80 seconds per item). More than a third of those reports were the announcements of the Republican Electoral Commission (36 percent), whereas about one fourth (27 percent) were the different political parties’ announcements of support or abjudication of particular candidates.

From November 26th, a specialised programme, the “Electoral Chronicle”, was introduced again, even more side tracking pre-elections issues from the main news programmes. The concept of this chronicle was again anachronic: in principle, (some) elaborated news items from the RTB “Dnevnik 2” with the occasional video and audio coverage of the candidates’ appearances.

It is quite indicative that the candidates’ elections committees had scarcely used the possibility offered by the Radio Television of Serbia to present their candidates in form of the two-minute item of their own choice. The reason for such behaviour was the actual non-existence of campaign that might have been used for “tailoring” of such items. In the previous campaign, there were lot more items of this kind, since the candidates had travelled all over Serbia, holding the panels and rallies almost on a daily basis, while this time such events were very scarce. That is why the elections committees tended to make the best of archive footage, a week or two old, or of the appearances of “their” candidate in cultural events not related to the elections at all, but convenient for “video shooting”.

The expectations that the “non-state-controlled” electronic media, free of obligations imposed upon the state-controlled ones, would have a different reporting approach to the campaign did not come through. Consequently, for instance, TV Studio B –“News at 19:00” dedicated 34 percent of pre-elections reporting to the candidates and 66 percent to the indirect actors of the campaign. A total time spent over the two-week monitoring was not exceeding the duration of one and a half average news programme of this TV station. Among the indirect campaign actors, the longest media time was given to reports on support to particular candidates, or denial of support, whereas a significant disproportion was observed in publicity of the opposing parties in the main political scene.

PRINTED MEDIA

Although, by nature, the newspapers have the “advantage of delay” in comparison with the electronic media (coming out on a day following the events), in this case that was more a handicap. The very few campaign “crumbs” would had been picked by TV and radio stations a day earlier, so the lethargy of the campaign made an even more significant impression upon the analysis of production of the subjects of Guttenberg galaxy – particularly in the genre uniformity: a piece of news (most often), a piece of factual report with quotations (quite often) and, as a real “refreshment”, scarce routinely performed interviews with the “candidates”. Quite often, neither of the two participants had anything to ask nor to answer, apart from the well known didascalia.

The attitude of the printed media towards the pre-elections activities of presidential candidates was well reflected by the space given: the three daily papers of the “more popular” provenience gave the candidates practically identical share of space, as if they measured it on the pharmacist’s weighing scales: “Blic” (12.1 percent), “Nacional” (12.7 percent) and “Vecernje novosti” (11.9 percent). In general, the space given was lesser than the space given to sports or crime sections. The space given by the so-called “daily-political” newspapers, “Politika” and “Danas”, was even significantly smaller (5 an 8 percent respectively).

Distribution of reports on presentation of candidates was “evenly disproportional”: i.e. 30:53:16 percent in “Blic”, 31:56:13 percent in “Nacional” and 41:39:20 in “Vecernje novosti” However, such disproportion was above all a “merit” of those candidates who conducted their campaigns “negatively”, spending more time criticising their opponents than promoting their own programmes (if they had offered them at all!)