With every election, there is always a need for media to critically engage with politicians, political parties and their policies, and ask the right questions for the electorate to cast informed votes. To become informed voters, the electorate require a variety of information on government and political parties, and the democratic system itself. The information comes from a variety of sources, however, media coverage must be balanced, equitable, fair and accurate, in order to contribute to free and fair elections. This is a significant and certainly demanding responsibility that makes it essential for the media’s coverage of elections to be explored. In light of this, Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) proposes a series of seminars followed by radio debates on the following issues:

• Gender as an election issue;
• Children as am election issue; and
• Social Justice as an election issue.

MMA strongly believes that it is important that media highlights diverse dimensions of elections to empower civil society and citizens, particularly those who marginalised to engage critically with the media. A core part of our elections monitoring project this year is trying to ensure that citizens are able to hold media and politicians to account and have a say in setting the news agenda in its coverage over the elections period  specifically in terms of ensuring the media gives citizens what they want and need.

To view the invitation click here