April 07, 2009

Election Coverage 6 April 2009 – Voters from Many Places

DEMOCRACY & GOVERNANCE RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS
By admin 86 Comments

Articles on the 6 of April focused on the impending announcement by the NPA on whether Jacob Zuma would face charges, with the majority predicting that the NPA would drop charges.  Extensive coverage was also afforded to statements by Zuma that Afrikaaners were the only true White South Africans as well as Zuma’s response to Desmond Tutu’s comments about Zuma.  Coverage of general election stories was notably higher.

Coverage was quite fragmented, with the top story for the day being:

1. ANC’s clarifications on Zuma’s comments about Afrikaaners being the only true white South Africans, and a response from DA.
• Business Day, p. 3;
• Sowetan, p. 4;
• The Citizen, p. 4;
• The Times, p. 4; and,
• The Star, p. 3.

In line with general trends in media coverage election stories have tended to focus on Gauteng, the Western Cape and KZN.  Monday’s coverage was notable for providing coverage from a greater diversity of provinces (most strikingly in the Sowetan).  The Free State was mentioned in The Star with campaigning by Cope (p. 2), Sowetan covered the North West in relation to UDM’s campaigning (p. 6), Limpopo/ Mpumalanga in a story (p.6) and Mpumalanga in another (p. 5).  The Mpumalanga stories were about Moutse district which will be reincorporated into Limpopo (from Mpumalanga) following an ongoing dispute.  There was another item from Mpumalanga about alleged intimidation of Cope supporters by ANC supporters.  A lesser covered part of Cape Town ‘Vryground’ was also included in Sowetan’s coverage (p. 4).

Daily Sun, which often covers stories from various provinces continues to carry very little election coverage.  In contrast, the regional diversity in Sowetan’s coverage was refreshing and enabled a broader perspective of South Africa to be covered.

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Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) has monitored every democratic election in South Africa. This year we are doing the same, providing daily and weekly reports on media coverage of election news, as well as MMA’s Election Media Ratings

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The following media are reviewed in the compilation of this report: Business Day, Daily Sun, etv primetime news; SABC 3 primetime news; Sowetan, The Citizen, and The Star and The Times.