MISA-Mozambique thanks the media for good coverage of election campaign

MISA-Mozambican has praised the Mozambican media for its coverage of the election campaign that ran from 13 September 2009 to 25 October 2009. A statement issued by the National Governing Council of MISA-Mozambique declared that the media, “guided by criteria of independence, impartiality and rigor”, had acted in line with “high professional and ethical standards. The media had thus “contributed not only to the timely publication of news items about the campaign, but also to voter education”.

The statement singles out Radio Mozambique and praised it, particularly for its morning chat show “Café de Manha”.
 
“With the radio’s live broadcasts, representatives of the various competing forces were able to present their manifestos to the electorate, and had the opportunity to enter into dialogue with the listeners, through phone calls, e-mail and text messages”, MISA-Mozambique noted.
 
Nonetheless, MISA-Mozambique also criticized “some of the media who were lacking in rigor in some of the information they disseminated, and thus left something of a stain on the selfless work of journalists”.
 
Meanwhile MISA-Mozambique criticized the independent weekly “Savana” for its blunder last week when it claimed that the company hired to produce the software for voter tabulation, “Labsoft”, was unregistered and thus illegal. It was very easy for other journalists to show that Labsoft was legally registered over a year ago, and that there is nothing illegal about the National Elections Commission (CNE) using its services.
 
MISA-Mozambique said the radio should have undertaken “more exhaustive investigation”.
 
However MISA-Mozambique called on journalists “to continue with the same levels of commitment”, guided by the country’s press law and by the Code of Conduct for Election Coverage which the main media have all voluntarily signed.

Reagan Malumo
Programme Officer: Media Freedom Monitoring and Research
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Regional Secretariat
21 Johann Albrecht St
Private Bag 13386
Windhoek
Namibia
Phone: +264 61 232 975
Fax: +264 61 248 016
Mobile: +264 81 311 2626

Back

This site is not compatible with
Safari browser
© 2009 Media Institute of Southern Africa : promoting media diversity . pluralism . self-sufficiency . independence.
All rights reserved.
Disclaimer: The newspapers' contents on the links and all other related materials hosted on our site are products and sole responsibility of respective publishers and do not necessarily represent the views of MISA nor its employees.