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Direct access to the media in election campaign
A review & recommendations for Zimbabwe
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe
November 30, 2001

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Three types of media coverage
Media coverage of elections is often divided into three different types:

• Voter education – material that tells the electorate what they are voting for, why they should vote and how they should go about it. This will often be produced by the electoral authorities, but may be produced by the media themselves.
• Editorial coverage – that is, all news and current affairs coverage that is under the editorial control of the media themselves, rather than the political parties or candidates, or the electoral authorities.
• Direct access coverage – material that is produced by the political parties or candidates themselves, in order to use the media to tell the electorate about their policies.

It is this third type of coverage that is the subject of this paper and MMPZ’s workshop.

Direct access: issues to discuss
There are a number of different approaches to allocating direct access coverage to parties and candidates. These have evolved under different political systems according to local conditions. So there is no right or wrong answer about which is the "best" system. Yet this does not mean that they are all equally fair to the candidates or equally informative to the public. All it means is that if it wants to take account of previous experience in devising its own direct access system, Zimbabwe has a lot to draw upon.

What follows is a summary of some of the main issues to be decided about direct access:

• Will it be a system of paid advertising or free access to the media? Or a mixture of both?
• Will the same system apply to broadcasting and the print media?
• Will the same system apply to privately and publicly owned media?
• If private advertising is allowed, will any limit be placed on the amount of advertising allowed for each candidate?
• If free direct access is allowed, how will it be decided what time or space is allocated?
• Who will make these decisions?
• Who will produce the direct access material?
• Who will pay for the direct access material?
• Will there be any restrictions on the content of direct access materials? If so, what criteria are used and who decides?
• Should the media be held responsible (or legally liable) for the content of direct access material?
• In direct access broadcasting, at what time will broadcasts take place? Who decides this?
• Are there limits on campaign political spending (that might affect advertising spending)?
• Should free time or space given to a candidate be counted as a campaign donation?

This paper review Zimbabwe’s recent experience with direct access media coverage. Then it will discuss the list of questions above, drawing not only on Zimbabwe’s experience, but also upon good practice elsewhere. On each issue the paper will offer a recommendation from MMPZ (or in some cases prioritised options). These can form the basis for discussion at the workshop.

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