SARAJEVO, 29.03.2018. – Public services did not offer citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina sufficient fair, uniform and professionally created information in the central newscasts broadcast during the pre-election campaign in 2016. Equal presenting of political leaders and candidates in the elections was recorded in the BHRT’s news, while RTRS and FTV showed favoring of certain candidates and leaders.
These are the key results of the central news of three Public Broadcasting Services in the pre-election campaign for the Local elections 2016, which was presented in the premises of the parliamentary assembly in BiH.
„We analyzed the party leaders and candidates in the local elections by analyzing the minutes and seconds of their appearance in the central news programs of three public broadcasters, in the period from September 18 to October 9, 2016“, said the general secretary of the BH Journalists Association, Borka Rudić who presented the key findings.
„The research has mathematically shown that there is a political impact on public services and it is necessary to speak publicly in order for public broadcasters to better prepare themselves for the elections, and to better and more comprehensively perform the tasks ahead of them “, said the jurist and media expert Mehmed Halilović commenting the findings of the research , and added how important it is to correct mistakes so that the PBS’s would not lose public confidence even more.
„The time for legal changes before elections is leaking. Unless there is a change before the upcoming elections, BiH politicians will show that their goal is not to have fair and fair elections. However, we hope that the decision-makers will deny this“, said the director of the Coalition for Free and Fair Elctions – Pod lupom, Dario Jovanović.
The subject of this research is media coverage in the central news programs of three public broadcasters in Bosnia and Herzegovina: BHT, FTV and RTRS. In the narrower sense, the subject of research is the statements of political subjects at BiH public services, with the aim of determining how much media attention has been devoted to informing about local elections.
During the monitored period, in reporting the three public services in BiH, RTRS focused mostly on Milorad Dodik – 32min and 46s. When it comes to the leaders of the other two major political parties in BiH, RTRS did not reported about Bakir Izetbegovic at all, while there were 31 seconds dedicated to reporting on Dragan Covic. At FTV, during the same period, the appearance of Milorad Dodik last 7min and 15s, followed by Bakir Izetbegović in the duration of 5min and 12s, while Dragan Čović was present in 1min 58s of the program. The BHT program recorded the highest level of equality of the three politicians: Bakir Izetbegović appeared for 1min 55s; Dragan Čović for 1min 40s; and Milorad Dodik for 1min 52s.
The most important piece of information about the professional attitude of public services is the attitude the media takes in reporting about candidates or politicians. In total 81 times, the public service took a positive view of the candidate, which is certainly proof of political pressures on the media. The same can be said of 38 negative reporting, which is also a problem. Only 35 times, the media has taken its rightful position, which is to be fair, balanced and objective in its work – the audience is the one who needs to make a stand on a particular candidate, and the public media should play the role of a neutral opinion arena, especially during the election campaign.
Monitoring showed that public services primarily gave space to party officials and current government institutions, and that they primarily acted as functionaries of their parties, rather than as political candidates in the elections. Evidence for this is the fact that all three public services 23 times gave space to party candidates, and a total of 131 times to party presidents or other public officials in BiH. Regarding the total dedicated time in the program, none of the three public services reported on candidates in the local elections in a balanced way in relation to their reporting on the presidents of the three most influential parties in BiH.
The conclusion is that there is a significant difference in the professionalism of BHT as a public service in BiH in relation to entity public services. The program of BHT has the highest level of uniformity in the presence of three politicians: Milorad Dodik, Bakir Izetbegović and Dragan Čović.
The additional monitoring of media in the pre-election campaign for the 2016 Local Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina was organized with the intention to determine, by monitoring the way in which media reports on candidates in three public services, whether and how much they contribute to making citizens informed, and how much public services provide citizens with information that would enable them to base their choice of political candidates on the arguments and goals they have been presented through the media.
The analysis was realized within the framework of the project Monitoring media in the election process, which is being implemented by Consortium of BH Journalists Association and BORAM for the Coalition for Free and Fair Elections “Pod Lupom” within the BASE project.
