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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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If private advertising is allowed, will any limit be placed on the amount of advertising allowed for each candidate?
Few countries allow totally unrestricted spending on political advertising. The United States, where the system is relatively unregulated, still makes campaigns subject to strict laws on financing (which affects TV advertising in particular as the largest item in the campaign budget). Canada also has paid advertising during elections, but has a system similar to that which relegates free direct access in many countries, which sets a limit to the amount that any party may spend. Barbados, which allows candidates to top up their free access with paid advertising, nevertheless sets limits on how much can be bought.

MMPC Recommends

• If paid political advertising were to be allowed in broadcasting (which MMPZ regards as an undesirable option) then strict limits should be placed on spending.
• In any event, all sources of campaign funding should be made public. Failure to publish audited campaign accounts should be a criminal offence.

If free direct access is allowed, how will it be decided what time or space is allocated?
There are broadly two systems of allocating free direct access time or space:

• A system of equality – all parties or candidates receive the same amount.
• A system of equity (or fairness) – all parties or candidates receive a fair amount.

The argument in favour of an equality system is that every party gets a chance to put its view across. It will then be the electorate that chooses, rather than the electoral authority or the state broadcaster. This is a particularly popular system in a country’s first democratic election when no one is sure how much support the different parties enjoy.

But the argument against equality is that it always favours the incumbent party, since it promotes no-hope opposition parties and minimizes access for those parties that might actually topple the incumbent. There is also the danger that it encourages frivolous candidates who are merely seeking the free publicity. Also, if all parties have equal access there may be more information than the electorate can take in – again this will be most likely to favour the incumbent.

Equality tends to be more popular in presidential elections, where the choice is simpler than in parliamentary elections that might involve party lists and complicated systems of transferring votes. Thus countries like Brazil and France operate a system of equality in presidential elections. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and the Italian public broadcaster (all long-established democracies) operate systems of equal access. Some of these countries, however, operate a threshold system, whereby a party has to gain a certain level of public support before it has the opportunity of equal direct access time.

The alternative system of equity also has arguments in its favour. It means that parties are able to speak to the electorate roughly in proportion to the amount of support they enjoy. The electorate thus gets to hear the arguments between the main contenders for office.

The main disadvantage of the equity system is that it may be an obstacle to the emergence of new parties. However, the equity system can be modified to make sure that all parties or candidates get at least some direct access time.

There is no right or wrong answer to which approach is best. These are some considerations:

• Equality may work better when there are fewer parties or candidates. When there are too many then the "cake" may have to be cut into impossibly tiny slices, or made so large that there is too much election broadcasting for anyone to take in.
• Equality may work better in a new or "transitional" democracy. This perhaps contradicts the previous point, since new democracies often have many parties (and ruling parties in new democracies may encourage this). But the point is that if there has been no previous democratic election, then there will be no commonly agreed measure of how much popular support each party has.
• Conversely, equity may work better in an established democracy where there are clear measures of past electoral support. Or are the equality advocates right, and does this just obstruct the emergence of new political alternatives?

But these are only pointers. As indicated, many established democracies use the equality system. And new democracies, including Namibia and South Africa, have used the equity system.

MMPC Recommends

• Zimbabwe should adopt an equity system for allocating direct access broadcasting time. However, this system should contain a substantial allocation of time for new parties or candidates

The system adopted in South Africa, which MMPZ believes is a good one, takes three elements into account in allocating direct access time:

• All parties or candidates receive a basic allocation, regardless of past support or how many candidates they are fielding.
• Parties or candidates receive an additional allocation based upon past electoral support.
• And they receive an additional allocation based upon the number of candidates they are fielding.

MMPC Recommends

• MMPZ recommends that such a system is adopted in future for Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections. For presidential elections, the third element does not apply. Therefore MMPZ recommends that all presidential candidates should receive a basic allocation of direct access time. This should be substantially topped up with time allocated in proportion to the votes cast for each candidate’s party in the last parliamentary elections.

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