Lack of neutrality in Tunisia’s election coverage

In Tunisia, a team of monitors are  studying the election coverage of seven daily newspapers, four TV-channels and four radio-stations to evaluate how Tunisian media are choosing to cover the country’s first real, democratic elections

The Tunisian press has been acting under orders for more than 20 years before former ruler Ben Ali was toppled in January.

Now, with elections set for 23 October, the very same press often with the same directors and the same journalists, is faced with the task of overcoming past habits and instead living up to the media’s role as the fourth estate.

An IMS-supported team of media monitoring staff is taking a close look at how they are doing.

A lack of neutrality and too few women

“The same newspapers that were serving the regime have found themselves, overnight, writing articles to criticize the excesses of the family of Ben Ali”, says Amirouche Nedjaa, Executive Director of the IMS-supported Arab Working Group for Media Monitoring.

But as preliminary findings show, “overnight” is too short a time to overcome past inhibitions. Professional, independent and critical journalism is still lacking, with almost a quarter of the total political coverage composed of nothing more than party publicity.

Despite new legislation on gender equality in the Tunisian political elections, and several female candidates running, the press so far has only managed to allocate less than 3% of its total airtime and column space to women.

Media keen on impartiality

The media outlets themselves are taking a keen interest in the observations of Amirouche Nedjaa and his team of monitoring staff:

“Several media have tried to interpret the results in their favor saying that according to the observation their outlet was the most impartial. This speaks of a willingness to be impartial”, says Amirouche, while underlining the importance of the media’s crucial role and responsibility in the country’s emerging democracy:

“They must provide clear and unbiased information to allow the citizens to make their choice while being well informed.”

The monitoring of the Tunisian media during the election period is conducted under the responsibility of the Association Tunisienne des Femmes démocrates (ATFD) with the support of IMS.