«State media did not turn spotlight on elections as a political campaign,» — BAJ presents the results of monitoring media coverage of the parliamentary elections-2019

Ales Antsipen­ka, head of the mon­i­tor­ing group, not­ed that the state media prac­ti­cal­ly gave no cov­er­age to the polit­i­cal com­po­nent of the elec­tion.

The main focus of the elec­tion process in the state media were not peo­ple, but the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, dis­trict elec­tion com­mis­sions, and polling sta­tions. «For them, the vot­ers were one of the mar­gin­al actors, — said Antsipen­ka.

- When ear­ly vot­ing start­ed, state media explod­ed with infor­ma­tion on elec­tions, but it all came down to urg­ing the peo­ple to vote ear­ly. Vot­ers were pre­sent­ed in a deper­son­al­ized man­ner, and as a group. Live voic­es were hard­ly pre­sent­ed.  Anony­mous rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the par­tic­i­pants in the elec­toral process is one of the key fea­tures of the cov­er­age of the elec­toral process by the state-run media.»

The mon­i­tor­ing group point­ed out, the non-state media showed a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent approach: they avoid­ed anony­mous rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and gave space to both the oppo­si­tion and pro-gov­ern­ment can­di­dates.

Antsipen­ka gave TUT.BY as an exam­ple: if by the end of the elec­tions, mon­i­tors reg­is­tered men­tions of 90 can­di­dates by the por­tal.

“I do not want to glam­or­ize non-state media; I can only say that they were quite reserved in their cov­er­age.  Mean­while, the Belaru­sian state media seemed to attack inde­pen­dent observers. The atti­tude of the state media to inde­pen­dent observers may lead to their worse treat­ment by the author­i­ties dur­ing the next elec­tion.

I believe the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent observers may face prob­lems in the future, as they spoil the pic­ture of demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions, demon­start­ed by the observers from pro-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions and the CIS mis­sion,” — Ales Antsipen­ka said.

The task of the mon­i­tor­ing group was to draw jour­nal­ists’ atten­tion to the need to pro­vide full and objec­tive infor­ma­tion to the vot­ers, to have no bias, and to keep to the prin­ci­ples of inter­na­tion­al ethics and pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards.

Chair of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Andrei Bas­tunets spoke about the gen­er­al con­text of the par­lia­men­tary elec­tions: court hear­ings of the libel law­suits against Belarus­Par­ti­san, 21.by, and Vech­erni Bobruisk, filed by the chair­man of the Slonim dis­trict exec­u­tive com­mit­tee Henadz Khomich;  as well as ongo­ing per­se­cu­tion and moral pres­sure on blog­ger Andrei Pauk.