Report Faults Media, State on Female Participation in Polls

Nelson Wesonga

20 May 2011

Exactly three months after the February general elections, a recent report on how the media covered the 2011 polls has faulted the government and the private media for having given less prominence to female candidates.

The report, which is titled ‘Uganda Media Coverage of the 2011 Elections – Final Media Monitoring Report’, was done by Media Monitoring Network and released yesterday in Kampala.

Not even MPs

It notes that in the parliamentary race that featured 443 women candidates, the print media gave them less prominence (4.6 per cent) in the dailies and only 31.9 per cent in the weeklies compared to men who accounted for 95.4 per cent and 68.1 per cent of the coverage respectively.

It says this could be due to the media’s promotion of the coverage of personalities and conflict “which leads to less prominence and omission of women candidates since they are less antagonistic”.

It attributed the anomaly to the fact that journalists still preferred to talk to male politicians whom they considered to be more serious opinion leaders.

The report recommends that journalists should start appreciating the role of women by seeking their opinion on political matters.

“Nine out of 10 times, journalists preferred to quote men to women candidates on topical issues during the Election,” says the report.

The study was commissioned by the Deepening Democracy Programme with a goal of contributing to fair coverage of the 2011 polls, by exposing multiple audiences to information from varied media channels.

It was carried out between October 2010 and February 2011.

During the launch of the report, a commissioner with the national electoral body, Mr Steven Ongaria, warned that unless voter bribery is checked, money will continue to compromise results.

Mr Ongaria said the best way out of this is to strengthen the laws and police to execute their role.

He added that though there are laws against election-related crimes, implementation is still weak.

“There is a lot of money, especially when it comes to elections and this is marring the electoral process by compromising it. It is disturbing us as a commission, particularly when you see that the culprit is from the incumbent party.

“The problem is that some of these party heads do things with impunity. Even if you write to the minister concerned, nothing is done to the effect,” Mr Ongaria said.

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