Coverage of the 2020 Presidential Elections in Belarusian Media. Report 1

1. Introduction

The report sum­maris­es the find­ings of the first stage of the mon­i­tor­ing, from 25 May to 4 July 2020. The goal of the mon­i­tor­ing is to pro­mote high pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards and objec­tiv­i­ty in elec­tion cov­er­age. It also aims to draw the jour­nal­ist community’s atten­tion to the fact that it is jour­nal­ists’ and media’s pro­fes­sion­al duty to give vot­ers com­pre­hen­sive and unbi­ased infor­ma­tion about the elec­tion process, the can­di­dates’ agen­das and present a full range of their sup­port­ers’ and oppo­nents’ opin­ions.

As the organ­is­er of the mon­i­tor­ing, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ) under­scores the fact that pub­lish­ing unchecked infor­ma­tion and biased cov­er­age that brings pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls into dis­re­pute or prais­es just one of them leads to deceiv­ing vot­ers and under­min­ing their chances of mak­ing an informed choice on the vot­ing day. Fur­ther­more, such pub­li­ca­tions dis­cred­it jour­nal­ism as a pro­fes­sion.

The mon­i­tor­ing is based on qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive analy­ses of elec­tion-relat­ed con­tri­bu­tions to state-run and inde­pen­dent media. It reveals gen­er­al elec­tion cov­er­age trends and records instances of biased or dis­tort­ed cov­er­age, vio­la­tions of pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards and dis­re­spect for ethics in jour­nal­ism.

Accord­ing to the timetable set by the Belarus Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion (CEC), the mon­i­tored time span cov­ers col­lect­ing sig­na­tures for pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls’ nom­i­na­tion, sub­mit­ting the col­lect­ed sig­na­tures to local elec­tion com­mis­sions, estab­lish­ing elec­tion com­mis­sions, check­ing the sig­na­tures and some oth­er pro­ce­dures.

2. Summary

• The mon­i­tored time span is marked by vot­ers’ high­ly active par­tic­i­pa­tion. The evi­dence is unprece­dent­ed­ly high num­bers of those who signed for pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion of some of the incumbent’s oppo­nents.

How­ev­er, the sig­na­ture col­lec­tion was marred by numer­ous deten­tions and arrests of cam­paign­ers, pub­lic activists and oppo­si­tion politi­cians. The high­est point so far has prob­a­bly been the arrest of the most pop­u­lar pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Vik­tar Babary­ka and his son Eduard Babary­ka, who is the head of his cam­paign. Fur­ther­more, crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings have been ini­ti­at­ed against anoth­er run­ner for pres­i­den­cy, Mr Valery Cap­kała. The state-run and inde­pen­dent media have offered con­tro­ver­sial inter­pre­ta­tions and opin­ions of these extra­or­di­nary devel­op­ments.

• Although the gen­er­al pub­lic is high­ly inter­est­ed in the cur­rent elec­tion-relat­ed events, the state-run media have ‘stuffed’ the sub­ject, delib­er­ate­ly not bring­ing it into the focus. For exam­ple, the news on the Belaru­sian TV and Radio has not high­light­ed elec­tion-relat­ed items so far. When the upcom­ing elec­tion was men­tioned, it was most com­mon­ly placed in the con­text of the incumbent’s dec­la­ra­tions.

• The mon­i­tored news pro­grammes broad­cast by the state-run TV and radio sta­tions have not pri­ori­tised the upcom­ing elec­tion in terms of air­time giv­en to it and its actors. It was the incumbent’s vis­its to var­i­ous places in Belarus, his meet­ings with secu­ri­ty and mil­i­tary fig­ures, and speech­es to region­al admin­is­tra­tions that came first and fea­tured most promi­nent­ly in the news.

• The state-run media have prop­a­gat­ed sev­er­al clear mes­sages in their elec­tion-relat­ed cov­er­age: the incumbent’s oppo­nents are a destruc­tive force; Belarus sees a well-orches­trat­ed cam­paign intend­ed to bring the cur­rent regime into dis­re­pute, so as to ‘knock the soci­ety off-bal­ance’, and Belarus is fac­ing a threat of being par­ti­tioned and los­ing its sov­er­eign­ty.

• Allu­sions to con­spir­a­cies have been quite typ­i­cal. The oppo­nents have been pre­sent­ed as plot­ters and dum­mies guid­ed by ‘pup­peteers’ from the East and the West through pop­u­lar video blogs and RFE/RL streams.

• The state-run media have also used hate speech, pre­sent­ing cer­tain pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls in a neg­a­tive light.

• The elec­torate has been threat­ened with for­eign inter­ven­tion, los­ing the country’s sov­er­eign­ty and par­ti­tion­ing.

• Where­as the inde­pen­dent media gave only mod­est cov­er­age to the ear­li­er ‘low-key’ elec­tions, they have now put the spot­light on elec­tion-relat­ed issues.

• The inde­pen­dent media dif­fer con­sid­er­ably from their state-run coun­ter­parts in the man­ner of elec­tion coverage.The for­mer have offered both infor­ma­tion and analy­sis, focus­ing on key actors, such as the incum­bent, his oppo­nents, and vot­ers with their activ­i­ties.

Fur­ther on we present quan­ti­ta­tive data and facts that can lead to cer­tain con­clu­sions about some spe­cif­ic traits and trends in the upcom­ing elec­tion cov­er­age, as well as show how dif­fer­ent media have pre­sent­ed the key actors.

Last but not least, the sec­tion on Media Effects offers a brief analy­sis of vio­la­tions of ethics in jour­nal­ism.

3. Key Findings

Some impor­tant devel­op­ments have undoubt­ed­ly result­ed in a surg­ing atten­tion to the upcom­ing elec­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, some con­tenders have arisen from out­side the tra­di­tion­al oppo­si­tion cir­cles and become increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar. More­over, part of urban pop­u­la­tion that was until recent­ly indif­fer­ent to pol­i­tics has dra­mat­i­cal­ly become politi­cised. Anoth­er impor­tant change is con­nect­ed with major shifts in the chan­nels and media that the elec­torate is now using to get infor­ma­tion. Last but not least, there have been a lot of dras­tic events such as cam­paign­ers’ arrests, crim­i­nal cas­es opened against two lead­ing pres­i­den­tial con­tenders, with one of them, Mr Babary­ka, being arrest­ed, and deten­tions and arrests of pop­u­lar video blog­gers, civ­il soci­ety activists and polit­i­cal fig­ures. 

3.1 State-run media

While CEC Chair­per­son Lidz­i­ja Jar­mošy­na was the most fea­tured media per­son­al­i­ty in the run-up to the pre­vi­ous elec­tions, this time she has stayed out of the lime­light. It is the coun­try leader Mr Lukašen­ka who has made the most star­tling state­ments.

Here is one of such state­ments, ‘Some nom­i­na­tion seek­ers’ cam­paign­ers are abus­ing the right to cam­paign in order to knock the soci­ety off-bal­ance and desta­bilise the social and polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion; then they will form guer­ril­la groups and we can­not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they are will­ing to stage a brawl in the square.’ (Panara­ma, Belarus 1, 09/06/2020)

This type of fram­ing stirred a strong emo­tion­al reac­tion. Panara­ma also quot­ed the Pres­i­dent as say­ing, ‘We will bring back every­one to their sens­es in the right place at the right time! There will be no pow­er change, to say noth­ing of a Maid­an.’ [a ref­er­ence to a wave of demon­stra­tions and protests in Ukraine which led to Vik­tor Yanukovich’s oust­ing – translator’s note.] (Panara­ma, Belarus 1, 10/06/2020).

The state-run media have some­times claimed that cer­tain con­tenders are alleged­ly obey­ing orders from for­eign HQs. At the end of sig­na­ture col­lec­tion for pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, when one of the hope­fuls was already in prison, BelTA infor­ma­tion agency quot­ed the incum­bent, ‘Masks have been torn off not only some dum­mies we had here, but also some pup­peteers sit­ting out­side Belarus.’

Inter­est­ing­ly enough, the over­all emo­tion­al charge some­times bor­dered on apoc­a­lyp­tic visions. ‘This sum­mer the gov­ern­ment is going to take a hard exam­i­na­tion,’ said the Kon­tu­ry host in the open­ing remarks to one of his shows. ‘Peace, state sov­er­eign­ty and the future are at stake.’ (Kon­tu­ry, ONT, 07/06/2020)

It may sound like a para­dox, but even though ten­sions run high in the run-up to the elec­tion, the state-run media have not delib­er­ate­ly brought into focus elec­tion-relat­ed issues. As a rule, there have been no spe­cial high­lights in the news on the radio and TV, the print media do not have rel­e­vant sec­tions, pub­lish­ing some spo­radic con­tri­bu­tions. And when elec­tion-relat­ed events were men­tioned, they were often placed in the con­text of the incumbent’s dec­la­ra­tions or referred to indi­rect­ly.

The fig­ures below give an idea how the upcom­ing elec­tion is being cov­ered in the state-run media.

The shares of air­time and space giv­en to elec­tion cov­er­age show that these media do not pri­ori­tise elec­tion-relat­ed issues.

The Panara­ma news pro­gramme on Belarus 1 allo­cat­ed about 10% of its air­time to sport, near­ly 7% to weath­er and only 4% to elec­tion cov­er­age.

Radyjo­fakt on the First Nation­al Chan­nel of the Belaru­sian Radio gave 6% of its air­time to elec­tion cov­er­age, which was less than weath­er (7%) and sport (8%).

If we com­pare how much atten­tion the upcom­ing elec­tion receives in the print media, the per­cent­age of space giv­en to the sub­ject in the state-run SB. Belarus Segod­nya was about twice as lit­tle as in the inde­pen­dent Nar­o­d­na­ja Vola.

With­out focus­ing on the elec­tion, the state-run media turned the spot­light on the incum­bent, Pres­i­dent Lukašen­ka.

Nashi Novosti on ONT and Panara­ma on Belarus 1 allo­cat­ed to him over 80% of the whole air­time giv­en to all the elec­tion actors. The cor­re­spond­ing fig­ure for Radyjo­fakt was 70%.

The Pres­i­dent also had a rather strong pres­ence in Sun­day pro­grammes, the Glavny Efir on Belarus 1 and the Kon­tu­ry on ONT, get­ting 58% of the total cov­er­age giv­en to all the elec­tion actors.

The print media grant­ed the incum­bent from 75% to 90% of the total space giv­en to all the mon­i­tored actors. (The exact share depend­ed on whether it is a nation­wide or region­al paper.)

All of these media pre­sent­ed the incum­bent in a pos­i­tive or high­ly pos­i­tive light.

In line with a long-estab­lished tra­di­tion, the oppo­nents of the regime have been either com­plete­ly ignored or min­i­mal­ly present. If we take the elec­tron­ic media, the above men­tioned Glavny Efir and Kon­tu­ry gave the most pop­u­lar con­tender Mr Babary­ka about 5% of the air­time allo­cat­ed to all the elec­tion actors, and Radyjo­fakt allo­cat­ed to him just 1% of its elec­tion-relat­ed cov­er­age. More­over, his per­son­al­i­ty was shown in a neg­a­tive or high­ly neg­a­tive light.

The state-run media promi­nent­ly fea­tured Belarus’ appar­ent achieve­ments. The share of such con­tent has notice­ably increased since late May, for exam­ple, because of the launch of a series called We Did It in the Glavny Efir on Belarus 1 and It’s Done, a joint project of the state-run TV sta­tions.

The reporters and the inter­vie­wees attribute the achieve­ments to the coun­try leader’s ini­tia­tives, decrees and demands, prompt con­trol and care for peo­ple. Below are just a few exam­ples.

‘Many thanks to our Pres­i­dent Alak­san­dr Lukašen­ka, who opened these con­va­les­cent homes,’ said a patient recov­er­ing from COVID-19. (Glavny Efir, Belarus 1, 07/06/2020)

‘There are the saint’s relics here, and Alak­san­dr Lukašen­ka paid homage to them,’ said a Nashi Novosti on Sat­ur­day reporter cov­er­ing the President’s vis­it to the con­vent in Pola­cak. ‘It was with the President’s sup­port that the sil­ver reli­quary was restored.’ (Nashi Novosti, ONT, 13/06/2020)

‘Dur­ing his cus­tom­ary week­ly vis­its to the country’s regions Alak­san­dr Lukašen­ka con­trols the sit­u­a­tion in the fields from the air in per­son,’ said a Panara­ma pre­sen­ter. ‘Noth­ing can be con­cealed from him and no excus­es will work.’ (Panara­ma, Belarus 1,  15/06/2020)

‘In 2006 the Head of State took a fate­ful deci­sion and all recu­per­a­tion cen­tres began work­ing in some com­pet­i­tive busi­ness envi­ron­ment,’ said Alak­siej Šapieć­ka, the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Pryaziorny recu­per­a­tion cen­tre. (Glavny Efir, Belarus 1, 28/06/2020)

The state-run media have demon­strat­ed a new trend to present the oppo­nents of the cur­rent regime as crim­i­nals.

For exam­ple, the First Deputy Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Affairs Hien­adź Kaza­kievič said in an inter­view to the Glavny Efir, ‘The heads of elec­tion com­mis­sions who held the par­lia­men­tary elec­tions last year have been recent­ly receiv­ing threats. That is, the com­mis­sions for this year’s elec­tion have not yet been formed, but these peo­ple and their fam­i­ly mem­bers are already receiv­ing threats.’ (Glavny Efir, Belarus 1, 31/05/2020)

Two weeks lat­er, on 13 June 2020, Nashi Novosti on Sat­ur­day claimed that the wife of a police­man involved in detain­ing a coor­di­na­tor of Mrs Cichanoŭskaja’s cam­paign had been men­aced. ‘Anoth­er thing is that the spouse has been receiv­ing threats, she is this policeman’s spouse,’ said the Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Affairs Jury Kara­jeŭ. ‘Well, nat­u­ral­ly, we will find them.’ (Nashi Novosti,  ONT,  13/06/2020)

‘There are some oth­er exam­ples as well. Crim­i­nals, no doubt about it,’ a jour­nal­ist com­ment­ed on the Minister’s accu­sa­tion.

It is the first time that the state-run media have said that inde­pen­dent media pose a threat to sta­bil­i­ty by using streams and new tech­nolo­gies to coor­di­nate protests. In par­tic­u­lar, they pinned the blame on some Telegram chan­nels and the RFE/RL.

‘If you watch care­ful­ly these bizarre streams of cam­paign­ing for nom­i­na­tion turned pub­lic gath­er­ings, which is proven by head­lines in inde­pen­dent media, you will of course see tech­nolo­gies behind them,’  claimed Mr Ivan Ejs­mant, the Chair­per­son of the Belaru­sian TV and Radio in the Klub Redak­torov (Edi­tors’ Club) week­ly show on Belarus 1. ‘”Why are you here?” “I’m dis­sat­is­fied.” “Who are you going to vote for?” “I am going to vote against.” “Who is going to win?” “We prob­a­bly won’t win.” “So what are you going to do on 9 August?”…’

3.2 Independent media

The mon­i­tored inde­pen­dent media include www.naviny.by online resource and two print media, the Nar­o­d­na­ja Vola and the Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da v Belorus­sii.

www.naviny.by has pub­lished elec­tion-relat­ed items in a spe­cial sec­tion, rank­ing them as a top pri­or­i­ty.

The cov­er­age con­tains both infor­ma­tion and analy­sis. The online resource has also held debates between some of the con­tenders.

The items have been bal­anced, which is sup­port­ed by the assess­ments of the actors and the per­cent­age of cov­er­age they received. www.naviny.by has fea­tured a wider range of actors than the state-run media. The spot­light has been on the pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls, with quite dif­fer­ent shares of cov­er­age as com­pared to the state-run media.

The Nar­o­d­na­ja Vola has pri­mar­i­ly focused its atten­tion on the con­tenders. At the same time it has been crit­i­cal of the incum­bent, the CEC, the gov­ern­ment, and local author­i­ties.

Just like the Nar­o­d­na­ja Vola, the Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da v Belorus­sii has some­times been crit­i­cal of the incum­bent, the CEC, and the gov­ern­ment. The paper pre­sent­ed the pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls Mr Babary­ka and Mrs Cichanoŭska­ja and their activ­i­ties in a pos­i­tive light.

Unlike the state-run media, the mon­i­tored inde­pen­dent ones have avoid­ed refer­ring to the actors in an anony­mous and deper­son­alised man­ner. They also give for­mal names of NGOs, move­ments, and polit­i­cal par­ties.

4. Media Effects

The term ‘media effects’ refers to one-sided or biased cov­er­age, unground­ed inter­pre­ta­tions, dis­tor­tions (delib­er­ate or not), selec­tive or frag­men­tary pre­sen­ta­tion, and hush­ing up events or facts that could influ­ence the pub­lic opin­ion or vision. The mon­i­tor­ing has record­ed such instances.

A vivid exam­ple is the cov­er­age of the inci­dent in Horad­nia, when the pop­u­lar video blog­ger and head of Svi­at­lana Cichanoŭskaja’s cam­paign Siarhiej Cichanoŭs­ki was detained dur­ing a cam­paign event to col­lect sig­na­tures for Mrs Cichanoŭskaja’s pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.

This is what the Glavny Efir pre­sen­ter had to say on 31 May 2020 about the cam­paign activists’ arrival in the city, ‘On a qui­et Fri­day evening in May, a small del­e­ga­tions in Jeeps arrived in Horad­nia in order to hold a pub­lic gath­er­ing under the pre­text of col­lect­ing sig­na­tures [for pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion – translator’s note]. By the way, ‘activists’ is an under­state­ment. The com­pa­ny looked more like a gang that bragged they were going to shoot straight, though in fact they were about to coin mon­ey.’ (Glavny Efir, Belarus 1, 31/05/2020)  

Inter­est­ing­ly enough, this thieves’ cant was used to describe a reg­is­tered nom­i­na­tion seeker’s cam­paign and absolute­ly legal sig­na­ture col­lec­tion.

The pre­sen­ter blamed Mr Cichanoŭs­ki for the inci­dent, ‘One of the col­lec­tors, who isn’t even seek­ing pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, end­ed up in a fight in broad day­light.’ The pre­sen­ter described his sub­jec­tive impres­sion, ‘There is a strong feel­ing that they want­ed a provo­ca­tion and they got it.’

‘Provo­ca­tion’ is a tell­tale word under the cir­cum­stances. The video broad­cast by the Glavny Efir clear­ly shows that it was a woman’s aggres­sive behav­iour that pro­voked the inci­dent, while the blog­ger clear­ly demon­strat­ed that he had no inten­tion of con­fronting her.

The show also aired some con­spir­a­cy hints, ‘After all, Cichanoŭski’s links to Rus­sia are said to be obvi­ous. It was there that he had made a for­tune until he decid­ed to put in the nips from Belaru­sians.’

On the day when the show went on air, the arrest­ed head of Mrs Cichanoŭskaja’s cam­paign had not even been for­mal­ly charged.

The state-run media used the same rhetoric of dis­clo­sure in their cov­er­age of the arrest of the most pop­u­lar pres­i­den­tial con­tender Mr Babary­ka. For exam­ple, Panara­ma com­ment­ed, ‘The com­pe­tent author­i­ties of Cyprus have pro­vid­ed detailed infor­ma­tion about ille­gal schemes, sums of mon­ey and ben­e­fi­cia­ries. It was then that the scheme orches­tra­tor and his accom­plices decid­ed to get into pol­i­tics. In oth­er words, first the shady busi­ness bust­ed and only then the sus­pects began seek­ing sal­va­tion in the elec­tion.’  (Panara­ma, Belarus 1, 18/06/2020)

The jour­nal­ist goes on to claim that the indi­vid­u­als impli­cat­ed in the case ‘state that it was Vik­tar Babary­ka who organ­ised one hun­dred per­cent of the ille­gal schemes and was their major ben­e­fi­cia­ry.’

It is evi­dent that the quotes are noth­ing oth­er than crim­i­nal charges, which vio­lates the pre­sump­tion of inno­cence. It is only a court of law that can find a per­son guilty.

Pro­fes­sion­al ethics require that jour­nal­ists refrain from any pub­lic accu­sa­tions regard­ing a defendant’s alleged actions until the court pass­es its ver­dict, i.e. until all evi­dence has been con­sid­ered and the defence has made its case.

Inter­est­ing­ly enough, the quot­ed report is rather long. It is unlike­ly that it was made on the day when Mr Babary­ka was arrest­ed. At the same time, Panara­ma did not report that Mr Babaryka’s cam­paign cof­fers had been blocked the day before. (The Belaru­sian leg­is­la­tion pro­vides for cam­paign cof­fers.)

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