In Media Monitoring Africa’s final weekly report on the 2009 Elections, we focus on the overall performance of media in terms of their role in enabling South African citizens to fully and effectively participate in their democracy through the provision of relevant and timely information in the lea...
Election press coverage for Tuesday 21 April 2009, the day before the elections, focused on the IEC’s readiness for the elections, and included various pieces in newspapers on the voting process. However, voters are unlikely to have been assisted in making their decision by media’s failure to ad...
Election coverage for Monday 20 April 2009 was dominated by items on the final weekend election rallies of the various political parties, predominantly the main parties. The ANC rally this weekend got most of the coverage. The Daily Sun also encouraged its readers to vote and then provided a carto...
“Investing in the health and wellbeing of the children of South Africa is an investment in the future development of our country.” SA Medical Research Council, 2003 For the past three weeks, Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) has produced weekly reports commenting on media’s election coverage. The ...
Election coverage for the weekend 18-19 April was notable for the significantly higher levels of informative coverage on the process of voting as well as on the parties themselves as compared to previous weeks’ coverage. Newspapers also encouraged South Africans to use their democratic right and...
Election press coverage for Thursday 16 April 2009 showed a significant increase, particularly when compared to the previous week, though this was more noticeable in some newspapers than others. After looking at the day’s top stories, the report looks at two editorials and asks what could the me...
Election coverage for Wednesday 15 April 2009 included a variety of different stories. However, the most prominent were stories about South African’s voting overseas. Although this was covered far more prominently on television, we are likely to see more coverage in the press tomorrow. An in...
Election coverage for Thursday 9 April and the weekend (10-13) continued to be dominated by the NPA’s decision to drop charges against Jacob Zuma, and the repercussions thereof. This is not surprising given the importance of the decision taken and its potential impact on South Africa. Thursday...
Election coverage for Tuesday 7th April was overwhelmingly focused on the NPA’s decision to drop the charges against Jacob Zuma and the reaction from various people. Not only were these stories prominently covered, but in most newspapers, they filled a majority of news coverage (as opposed to sp...