SWAZI POLITICAL REPORTING IS POOR

A major report into the quality of political reporting in Swazi media has found many areas in need of improvement.

Among the report’s main findings were:

Political coverage lacked diversity: The media are dominated by four topics, which took up a half of all political coverage. These topics were (i) labour/workers rights, (ii) the justice system, (iii) development and (iv) corruption.

At the same time topics such as government spending, democracy, HIV AIDS and poverty received little attention.

Regional stories were severely lacking: Political reporting gave minimal attention to regional stories and overwhelmingly favoured stories from Hhohho region, which includes the capital city of Mbabane and also the main parliament and Senate.

Female journalists were underrepresented: Female journalists were responsible for just 12 per cent of political coverage. The state-controlled broadcasting stations State-controlled Swazi TV and SBIS radio had the highest percentage of female journalists reporting on government and political issues. The Swazi News and Times Sunday had no political coverage written by women during the monitoring period.

The report called His Master’s Voice: Political Reporting in Swaziland 2007 was published earlier this month (June 2008) by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Swaziland Chapter.

I doubt very much if regular readers of Swaziland’s newspapers or viewers and listeners to the kingdom’s radio and television would find anything unusual in the report’s findings.

That is not to say that the report has little value. Quite the opposite, His Master’s Voice gives evidence to what until now for many people would be not much more than gut reaction.

The report, which was written by Mary Ellen Rogers, surveyed media over a five-week period in 2007.

Among others of its main findings were:

The majority of political reporting was single-sourced: 55 percent of stories only had one source of information or opinion. The Times Sunday had the least numberof single-sourced stories (41 percent), while the Weekend Observer had the most(68 percent). Political reporting was heavily dominated by male voices. Female voices barely featured in political stories, accounting for just 4 percent of all human sources. Swazi TV’s political coverage contained the most female voices (23 percent). Swazi News had just one female source in its political reporting during the monitoring period.

Again, it will come as no surprise to media watchers in Swaziland that government voices dominated political coverage in Swaziland. Political parties are banned in Swaziland and there are no organised ‘opposition’ voices in parliament or the Senate. The only potential for organised alternative views to those of the government come from non-government organisations.

The MISA report found that government sources accounted for 57 percent of all sources, and when government was defined more broadly to include the executive, judiciary and traditional authorities, the dominance of government voices jumped to 75 percent.

When the government spoke, it spoke most frequently about development. Among topics government spoke about least were social welfare and poverty.

The report concluded that a ‘typical’ political story in the Swazi media was ‘a basic event description, reported by a male journalist, containing one male government source, and, if biased, favoured government.

‘Coverage of government and political issues was largely superficial and uncritical and captured a limited range of views and voices.’

There clearly is a lot of work that needs to be done to improve the service the Swazi media give their audiences (readers, viewers, listeners).

The MISA report is packed with detail about the present state of political reporting and contains many recommendations for improvement.

I’ll say more about this report in future blogposts.

I have the full report as a PDF file. If you want a copy, email me at swazimedia@yahoo.com

See also
SWAZI JOURNALISTS TOLD ‘TELL THE TRUTH’