Media monitors at work in Sudan. Photo: Mia/IMS

Sudanese media’s election coverage is being meticulously monitored and documented by Sudanese monitors in the lead-up to the country’s elections in April. Brigitte Sins, IMS coordinator of the Sudan Media and Elections Project describes the challenges facing both media and media monitors in Sudan

With less than ten days to go until Sudan’s first elections in 20 years, media monitors across Sudan are working to deliver the third round of results on election media coverage in time for the elections.

Watch the Sudanese media monitors at work here.

Difficult conditions for media monitors

Spending most of her time travelling between North and South Sudan as IMS’ coordinator of the UNDP-funded Sudan Media and Elections Project, Brigitte Sins oversees around 40 local media monitors based in media centres in Khartoum and Juba, as well as in an additional seven states. What is unusual compared to most other election monitoring activities, the media monitoring in Sudan is carried out by local people, backed by Osservatorio di Pavia, an internationally recognised research institute in Italy and the Arab Working Group for media monitoring.

-  The Sudanese media monitors are working hard in difficult conditions with regular electricity black outs and varying internet connectivity, says Brigitte Sins, during a brief visit to IMS in Copenhagen.

Each monitor has been allocated a newspaper or radio station that they are in charge of perusing for election coverage. Apart from names of political parties and candidates, they look for themes such as women’s issues, voter education, hate speech and the journalistic professionalism behind the individual coverage.      

- When we first hired and trained the monitors, they did not know much about the election process. Now they are becoming experts in the course of their work. The challenge is for this acquired knowledge to be transferred to more people and benefit Sudan during the next elections, says Brigitte Sins.

Biased media coverage

Well into their second month of media monitoring, the Sudanese monitors trained by international monitoring experts, work to map out the space, airtime and content devoted to different political parties and themes by up to 40 print and broadcast media houses. In order for the Sudanese monitors to remain neutral in their work, they have been trained to follow internationally recognized methods of monitoring and assessing the balance of media coverage.

Their preliminary findings presented in the first two media monitoring reports released in February and March show that most of the media coverage in both North and South Sudan is focused on the ruling parties, with less space of airtime dedicated to the opposition. While these results may have been expected, this is the first time it has actually been documented and analysed through recognised media monitoring methods.

- The findings of media monitoring will enable journalists and editors to reflect on the way in which they cover elections. It is a tool of self-development and can also be used as a guideline for editors on what stories have not been covered.

Cautious response to media monitoring

When IMS and its partners in the Sudan media and Elections Consortium announced their intentions of monitoring, the response to the initiative by media in Sudan was one of caution. Was this a tool of control or development?

-  This is the first time that media election coverage in Sudan is being monitored and trained to cover elections, and so the cautious response of media naturally reflects their current situation, says Brigitte Sins.

She continues:

- Media in North and South Sudan work under strict editorial restrictions applied by authorities. However, the journalists in both North and South Sudan have given positive feedback on the other component of our project which is training journalists to cover elections.

- In Juba in Southern Sudan, training involved proactively looking for stories – a new experience for many of the journalists who have not had the option of being professionally trained.

Read more about the Sudan Media and Elections Project here.