TV networks ready to shoot, Khartoum, Sudan. Photo: Brigitte Sins/IMS

Female candidates are practically invisible in Sudanese media's coverage of their country's first elections in 20 years. With five days to go until the elections,  media monitors across Sudan document coverage overwhelmingly in favour of the ruling parties

TV and radio have almost doubled the airtime devoted to election reporting with the ruling parties NCP and SPLM accounting for the majority of airtime and print space.

Read the full media monitoring report here.

The NCP features in 46% of the total airtime dedicated to election and political coverage on television and 53% on radio, whilst SPLM receives 32% television airtime and 21% on radio.

Sudanese media coverage of the upcoming elections in Sudan from 11 – 13 April has increased considerably from February to March, according to the latest report released by IMS and the Sudan Media and Elections Consortium.

Female candidates ignored by media

Women may be the real losers of this election judging by the space and airtime allocated to women-related issues. Quantitative data of the coverage of politicians and candidates shows that female politicians in print press are allocated an average of 3 per cent of the overall editorial space devoted to politics and elections. Their male counterparts featured in 97 per cent of the coverage. Within audiovisual media, female politicians received an average of 5 per cent of the total editorial airtime on television and 6 per cent on radio.

Abdel-Rahman El Mahdi, President of the Sudanese Development Initiative, finds this trend worrying.

- Female candidates and women-related issues are receiving very little coverage of their political agendas. The election structure dictates that 25 per cent of the National Assembly seats must be allocated to women, but this is not reflected in the media’s coverage of the elections. There is very little coverage about who the female candidates are or what they stand for, he says.

Hate speech on the increase

As Election Day looms, the escalating intensity of language and tone surrounding the political campaigning is also apparent in the media coverage. While most newspapers monitored provided neutral and balanced coverage of the candidates, calls for violence in the media increased from six cases in February to 17 in March. Hate speech cases increased from 101 in February to 168 in March with print media accounting for 56 of these. Defamation is the main type of hate speech with accusations and mutual blaming taking place between the main contestants.

- This is the first time that Sudanese media’s coverage of an election in Sudan has been monitored and the first time that the media are receiving feedback on their performance, says Abdel-Rahman El Mahdi.

- This is an important opportunity for them to reflect on how and why they report as they do. The next step will be for us to sit down with media houses and review the results of the media monitoring reports released.

This is the third report released by the Sudan media and Elections Consortium. For more information, please contact International Media Support (IMS), tel. (45) 88327005 or email: ld[snabela]i-m-s.dk or visit: www.i-m-s.dk

Notes to the editor

The Sudan Media and Elections project is implemented by the Sudan Media and Elections Consortium (SMEC), a group of national and international organisations with expertise in media support. The SMEC carries out media monitoring of four TV stations, seventeen radio channels and thirteen newspapers in Sudan on a daily basis.

Media Monitoring Units began their activities on 13 February 2010 at the opening of the election campaign. Monitoring will continue untill the end of May 2010 to assess post election coverage.

The Media and Elections Project, funded by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is implemented by the Sudan Media and Elections Consortium, a group of national and international organisations with expertise in media support. The group comprises the Sudanese Development Initiative (SUDIA), International Media Support (IMS), the Arab Working Group for Media Monitoring (AWG), Fojo Media Institute, Norwegian Peoples Aid (NPA), and Osservatorio di Pavia.