Retired President Uhuru Kenyatta was in Nigeria leading the African Union observer mission to the giant’s February 25 election.
Pictures of Uhuru donning a branded sleeveless khaki jacket and a marching cap, busy watching over things at polling stations in the Land of Osuofia, did the rounds on social and mainstream media.
That is the easy part of reporting what election observers do.
After the poll, the AU chief observer issued his preliminary report. The election “took place amidst general insecurity in the northwest, the northeast, the southeast and southsouth geopolitical zones,” he said.
“The mission noted that the security issues presented a challenge to the conduct of the elections as noted in the attack on INEC [Independent National Electoral Commission] offices, personnel and materials before the election.”
This is the hard part. Such election monitoring reports irritate journalists. Was the election free and fair, or not? That’s what scribes want to know. Not lots of English.
“During the preliminary statements, what the media want to know and what the observers wish to share are not always aligned,” concludes a new study covering three African countries, including Kenya.
The report, ‘Media Representations of Election Observation in Africa’, is compiled by Thomas Molony and Robert Macdonald from the University of Edinburgh, UK, based on data from Kenya, The Gambia and Zambia.
“Observer statements generally consider various components of the election separately, acknowledge the process is still ongoing, and use language that can often be quite diplomatic and technical. What the media want most is an overall verdict on election quality in simple language,” the authors report.
“The media’s desire to hear simple binary judgements is often apparent in the questions that journalists ask during observation missions’ press conferences. In all three country case studies, some of the observation missions were either asked why they had not given a binary verdict, or for clarification on how their verdict should be expressed in binary terms.”
Since the advent of democracy in Africa – which dates back to the early 1990s when most single-party dictatorships converted to multiparty politics – the election observer has become a fixture on the continent.
Initially, they were mostly prefects from the West. Today, even the African Union has turned election observation into an institution.
The Edinburgh report finds that in all three case study countries, the media holds a generally positive sentiment towards election observation, and seldom questions the need for elections to be observed.
Another notable finding is that “reporters who cover election observation often do not have any expertise on the topic.” Sometimes things are so bad in newsrooms that reporters who usually cover sports or entertainment are deployed to elections.
“The best-suited reporters are those who normally specialise in political journalism, but during elections they are often busy covering the candidates and other political developments,” the report says.
“In all case study countries, junior journalists with less experience of elections demonstrate poor understanding of some aspects of election observation.”
The often complex and nuanced preliminary statements of observers can be misreported. Nelson Manneh, a journalist with Foroyaa newspaper in The Gambia, explained to researchers what all news people can easily relate to:
“You know, in journalism, when you receive a statement or when you attend a press conference, you always have a target and your target is ‘what do the public want? What do they want to see?’ You must be able to have a story to market your newspaper and one that is simplified for the average person…. Some journalists make a mistake in changing the words to something entirely different while trying to simplify. This can change the whole content.”
What do journalists recommend to improve coverage of election observation? 1) Observer missions can create a better working relationship with the media by engaging early. 2) They should invite journalists to pressers. 3) Engage with the media using local languages.
Better training? Yes, no. Nzau Musau, an editor at The Standard explains that: “It’s too rushed. That’s my impression of training related to election observation and training in general for the elections…. They’re always far away in Diani or Kisumu and I can’t go for three days, so I give them to someone, but someone who cannot make a difference – I need my best [journalists] here.”
Maybe media shouldn’t even worry about what observers have to say but concentrate on thorough coverage of the election itself.
