Morocco election 2007: Members of the Arab Working Group join the press meeting announcing the findings of monitoring of Moroccan media election coverage. Photo: Osama Al-Habahbeh/IMS

Monitoring the Algerian media coverage carried out by the Arab Working Group and the Algerian human rights organisation LADDH in the run-up to the presidential election on 9 April showed a general bias in favour of incumbent President Bouteflika

When Algerians opened their daily newspapers during the election campaign this spring, the chance of coming across an article on the president was much bigger than finding information on his opponents.

Media favoured the President

According to the preliminary findings, the vast majority of Algerian media paid much more attention to the incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika than to his opponents during the recent election campaign, the media monitoring showed.

Almost 28 percent of the media coverage was devoted to the president alone. In addition, parliamentary candidates supporting the President were granted about 15 percent of the coverage. In comparison, the five most important opponents to the President were granted around 10 percent respectively of the media's attention. The FFS and RCD parties, who supported a call to boycott the election, were hardly mentioned in the press, accounting for less than 2 percent of the media coverage.

"Media failed its role"

Apart from examining the quantitative sides of the media coverage, the character of the media coverage was also analysed showing that debates between candidates were completely absent. Furthermore, the study showed that 73 percent of the election topics in the media were covered in a positive manner, whereas only 14 percent of the topics were dealt with in a scrutinizing manner.

The monitoring included 11 newspapers, two radio channels and one TV station. The monitoring was carried out between 1 March and election day 9 April, when president Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected to his third consecutive term with 90 percent of the vote.

- Monitoring of the media is a way of saying that an election campaign should respond to the international standards that guarantee free and democratic elections, the president of LADDH Moustafa Bouchachi said according to 'Le Quotidien d'Oran'.

He went on to express his dissatisfaction with the media coverage during the elections:

- During the campaign the Algerian media have not divided their attention equally to the different candidates at all. The government and the official institutions are working in favour of one candidate", he says.

Regional network gave support

The media monitoring of the election campaign was conducted by the human rights organisation 'Ligue Algerienne de Défence des Droits de l'Homme' (LADDH) in close cooperation with the Arab Working Group, which is a network of Arab Human Rights organisations established by IMS and OSI.

Similar monitoring in connection with presidential and parliamentary elections has been carried out in Tunisia, Lebanon, Palestine, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Jordan and Morocco under the assistance of the Arab Working Group that organises training for the monitoring of media during elections in the Arab world.

Over the years, the network has built considerable expertise in media monitoring and developed the capacity in each member organisation to apply international standards for monitoring media coverage. At the same time the Arab Working Group has evolved into a regional network representing a wealth of knowledge which new members may build on to build capacity of their own.

Benchmarking media performance

Monitoring the media coverage ahead of elections serves to bring focus on media standards and media freedom. In the case of Algeria, national television and radio stations as well as some of the newspapers are state-controlled. According to BBC, a private press thrives too and there is no direct censorship, but laws set out prison terms and fines for insulting or defaming the president, MPs, judges and the army.

The final results of the media monitoring in Algeria is expected to be published in May.