The Coverage of the 2016 Parliamentary Election in the Belarusian Media. Report 1 (4–24 July, 2016)

See illus­tra­tions and method­ol­o­gy in attached PDF

1. Introduction

This report sum­maris­es the find­ings of the first stage of the par­lia­men­tary elec­tion mon­i­tor­ing in Belarus. Our analy­sis cov­ers eigh­teen Belaru­sian media, inde­pen­dent and state-run, elec­tron­ic and print­ed, nation­wide and region­al.

The mon­i­tor­ing aims at fos­ter­ing fair and pro­fes­sion­al media cov­er­age of the elec­tion.

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) that is doing the mon­i­tor­ing intends to draw the atten­tion of the jour­nal­ist com­mu­ni­ty to a fact that it is their pro­fes­sion­al duty to give vot­ers bal­anced, impar­tial and com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion about the elec­toral cam­paign, the can­di­dates’ agen­das and their sup­port­ers’ and oppo­nents’ opin­ions.

The mon­i­tor­ing method­ol­o­gy enables us to reveal both the over­all mod­el of the elec­tion cov­er­age and instances of poor pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards. We offer both quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive analy­sis of media items. The cri­te­ria for their assess­ment are based on inter­na­tion­al­ly accept­ed stan­dards of report­ing on elec­tions and ethics in jour­nal­ism.  Fur­ther­more, the ear­li­er mon­i­tor­ing process­es that the BAJ has been con­duct­ing for the last decade pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­pare the cov­er­age of sev­er­al elec­tions, trac­ing both changes and com­mon trends.

This stage of mon­i­tor­ing cov­ers the time span in which region­al and con­stituen­cy elec­tion com­mis­sions began their work, prospec­tive can­di­dates’ teams (PCTs) were reg­is­tered and hope­fuls (Hs) were seek­ing nom­i­na­tion as can­di­dates.

2. Summary

The find­ings of the mon­i­tor­ing lead to a con­clu­sion that the state-run elec­tron­ic media keep to their tra­di­tion­al mod­el of elec­tion cov­er­age. In oth­er words, they gave much less promi­nence to the forth­com­ing elec­tion than such sub­jects as sport and weath­er.

Just like in the pre­vi­ous elec­tions, it was the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (CEC) that played the role of the lead­ing news­mak­er at this stage. How­ev­er, the CEC for the most part shared infor­ma­tion relat­ed to tech­ni­cal or organ­i­sa­tion­al issues.

The prospec­tive can­di­dates’ teams and the hope­fuls them­selves were pre­dom­i­nant­ly rep­re­sent­ed anony­mous­ly. At the same time, these media report­ed on some pro-gov­ern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions (PGOs) engaged in col­lect­ing vot­ers’ sig­na­tures to endorse their nom­i­nees, and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives were able to appear on air.

Although there were instances of pre­sent­ing the oppo­si­tion in a neg­a­tive light, this time the assess­ments were more mea­sured than in the cas­es of the cor­re­spond­ing stages of the 2008 and 2012 par­lia­men­tary elec­tions.

Both nation­al and inter­na­tion­al observers received most­ly neu­tral cov­er­age.

Such inde­pen­dent media as www.tut.by and Nar­o­d­na­ja Vola paper obvi­ous­ly endeav­oured to avoid deper­son­alised rep­re­sen­ta­tion of var­i­ous elec­tion actors as much as pos­si­ble.

3. Key Findings

3.1 State-run Media

Nashi Novosti on ONT TV sta­tion gave only mar­gin­al atten­tion to the forth­com­ing elec­tion, with as lit­tle as 1.8% of its air­time allot­ted to the sub­ject. Mean­while, 5% of the air­time was allo­cat­ed to weath­er and 20% to sport. Near­ly the same pro­por­tion was typ­i­cal of Panara­ma news pro­gramme on Belarus 1. More­over, on sev­er­al occa­sions these pro­grammes did not cov­er elec­tion-relat­ed sub­jects at all, e.g. Nashi Novosti was silent about the upcom­ing elec­tion on 19, 21 and 22 July, and Panara­ma did not report on the sub­ject on 23 July.

Radyjo­fakt on the 1^st Chan­nel of the Nation­al Radio allot­ted slight­ly more air­time, name­ly 5% to elec­tion-relat­ed issues, while weath­er fore­casts took up about 9%.  Inci­den­tal­ly, dur­ing the cor­re­spond­ing stage of the 2015 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, weath­er fore­casts received the same amount of cov­er­age, where­as the elec­tion was giv­en about 10% of the air­time, i.e. two times as much.

Radyjo­fakt allo­cat­ed about 12% of its air­time to sport. It had even a big­ger share of air­time in the news on Radyjo Stal­i­ca – a whole 48%.

 It has to be point­ed out that the four-year cycle of par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in Belarus is in sync with that of the sum­mer Olympics. How­ev­er, in 2004, 2008 and 2012 can­di­dates were reg­is­tered when the Olympics had fin­ished, but this time the key stage of cam­paign­ing is bound to coin­cide with Olympic broad­casts and lots of infor­ma­tion about sports in all kinds of media.

It was the CEC rep­re­sen­ta­tives who received the high­est share of air­time of all the mon­i­tored actors. Nashi Novosti on ONT allot­ted the CEC 24% of the total cov­er­age giv­en to all the elec­tion actors, and the cor­re­spond­ing fig­ure for Radyjo­fakt was about 54%. Most com­mon­ly, the faces of the CEC on the mon­i­tored TV and radio sta­tions were its Chair­per­son Lidz­i­ja Jar­mošy­na and CEC Sec­re­tary Mikałaj Łaza­vik.

The region­al TV sta­tions fea­tured region­al elec­tion com­mis­sions, polling sta­tions, con­stituen­cy com­mis­sions and the CEC more promi­nent­ly. For exam­ple, they received 21%, about 11%, about 4% and 9.4% respec­tive­ly of the total cov­er­age Naviny-rehi­jon of the Mahiloŭ Region­al TV and Radio Com­pa­ny gave to all the elec­tion actors.

As for the oth­er actors, the nation­wide and region­al TV and radio sta­tions pre­dom­i­nant­ly pre­sent­ed the prospec­tive can­di­dates’ teams and the hope­fuls them­selves in a deper­son­alised man­ner. The cov­er­age these cat­e­gories received oscil­lat­ed between 5% and 15% of the total air­time giv­en to all the elec­tion actors.

While this deper­son­alised rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the elec­tion actors was a pre­vail­ing trend in the state-run media, some of them, e.g. Naviny Homiel of the Homiel TV and Radio Com­pa­ny on 7 July and Radyjo­fakt on 21 July in fact cam­paigned for pro-gov­ern­men­tal nom­i­nees and those pro-gov­ern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions that were col­lect­ing vot­ers’ sig­na­tures to endorse them.

www.belta.by state-owned Inter­net resource offered a more diverse pic­ture of the forth­com­ing elec­tion, pre­sent­ing not only the elec­tion com­mis­sions of var­i­ous lev­els, deper­son­alised prospec­tive can­di­dates’ teams and the deper­son­alised ‘elec­torate’, but also a num­ber of polit­i­cal par­ties, such as the Unit­ed Civic Par­ty and the BPF Par­ty, as well as the deper­son­alised ‘oppo­si­tion’.

www.belta.by pre­sent­ed the BPF Par­ty and the ‘oppo­si­tion’ for the most part in a neg­a­tive light. The lat­ter was treat­ed in a sim­i­lar key by the pres­i­den­tial Belarus Segod­nya. The paper also spoke neg­a­tive­ly of the OSCE/ODIHR observers. 

The oth­er state-owned media most typ­i­cal­ly gave both nation­al and inter­na­tion­al observers neu­tral cov­er­age.

The mon­i­tored region­al papers main­ly lim­it­ed them­selves to offi­cial infor­ma­tion the CEC gave on the upcom­ing elec­tion.

3.2 Independent Media

In con­trast to the state-run media, www.tut.by and the Nar­o­d­na­ja Vola paper offered a clear­ly per­son­i­fied elec­tion pic­ture. These did not only report on what the CEC, the gov­ern­ment or polling sta­tion boards were doing in prepa­ra­tion to the vot­ing day, but also focused on prospec­tive can­di­dates, giv­ing their names, and offered their read­ers an insight into the agen­das of some of them.

The Nar­o­d­na­ja Vola wrote about eight per­son­al­i­ties, and www.tut.by fea­tured or men­tioned six prospec­tive can­di­dates. Both the media in some cas­es gave these actors about the same share of their space as the prospec­tive can­di­dates’ teams and the gov­ern­ment. These per­son­al­i­ties received chiefly neu­tral cov­er­age.

The oth­er mon­i­tored inde­pen­dent print­ed media did not essen­tial­ly focus on the forth­com­ing par­lia­men­tary elec­tion at this stage.

4. Assessments

The state-run media gave some assess­ments of the ini­tial phase of the par­lia­men­tary elec­tion.

CEC Sec­re­tary Łaza­vik on how the region­al and con­stituen­cy elec­tion com­mis­sions were formed: ‘I hope the fol­low­ing stages of the elec­tion are just as demo­c­ra­t­ic and open. I mean the for­ma­tion of the polling sta­tion boards in par­tic­u­lar.’ (Vicieb­s­ki Vieśnik. 7 dzion of the Vicieb­sk TV and Radio Com­pa­ny, 10/07/2016)

Head of the CIS Obser­va­tion Mis­sion Lebe­dev: ‘At present we can describe the elec­tion as peace­ful and qui­et…’ (Radyjo­fakt on the 1^st Chan­nel of the Nation­al Radio, 13/07/2016). CEC Chair­per­son Lidz­i­ja Jar­mošy­na aired the same opin­ion.

‘The can­di­dates’ teams are quite active’, ‘the elec­tion com­mis­sions func­tion in their nor­mal way’, and ‘at the same time, we observe that Belaru­sian cit­i­zens are show­ing rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle inter­est in can­di­dates rep­re­sent­ing all man­ner of oppo­si­tion organ­i­sa­tions. They are fac­ing seri­ous prob­lems con­cern­ing the col­lec­tion of vot­ers’ endorse­ment sig­na­tures and the cit­i­zens’ low inter­est in them,’ said KGB Chair­per­son Valery Vakulčyk in a meet­ing with the Pres­i­dent. (Radyjo­fakt on the 1^st Chan­nel of the Nation­al Radio, 19/07/2016)

The infor­ma­tion giv­en above sup­ports the con­clu­sion that this year’s par­lia­men­tary elec­tion is going to be even more low-key and lack­lus­tre than the pre­vi­ous ones. In all prob­a­bil­i­ty, it is the CEC, oth­er elec­tion com­mis­sions and state insti­tu­tions that are going to be its pri­ma­ry dri­ving force, instead of polit­i­cal par­ties or move­ments.