Serbia's watchdog: REM to publish election campaign media monitoring

N1

The Bureau for Social Research (BIRODI) called on the Council of the Regulatory Body for Electronic Media (REM) to publish the monitoring database on media coverage of the June 21 election campaign in Serbia.

That, according to BIRODI, would help the professional and scientific public to contribute to complying a basis for dialogue on media election conditions.

„This time as well, we call on the REM Council to publish the media monitoring database and thus allow the professional and scientific public to contribute to a dialogue on media election conditions,“ BIRODI said.

The REM report on the latest general vote in Serbia was a combination of significant progress and (methodological) omissions, BIRODI said.

„We see significant progress in finding a legal basis for conducting media election monitoring, introducing the presence of public officials, including  Serbia’s President (Aleksandar Vucic) as well as analysing the topics in the press articles.“

BIRODI added the presence of the so-called party camera phenomena within election coverage should cease since it violated the Article 47 of the Law on Electronic Media and the Code of Journalists of Serbia, which was only respected by TV N1, which REM mentioned in its report.

„We’ve noticed methodological omissions in the absence of measuring the tonality of representation of election participants following the ODIHR methodology.

Instead of applying the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) methodology of media monitoring during the election process, REM opted for a descriptive analysis in the part of the tonality analysis, which did not have the required level of accuracy in terms of positive, neutral and negative time for each of the monitored people.

BIRODI recalled the ODHIR report on the election campaign which said the abuse of public office in the election campaign, was led by President Vucic.