"Voters casting votes during Presidential and Legislative elections in Kinshasa" by MONUSCO via Wikimedia Commons is licensed under CC0

How people vote in elections and referendums often depends on what they hear on the radio, see on television or read in the newspaper and on news sites. On the African continent, journalists had their work cut out for them in 2018 because the following countries held elections between July and the end of the year:

Mali (presidential election in July).
Zimbabwe (presidential and parliamentary elections in July ).
Libya (parliamentary elections in September).
Cameroon (presidential election in October).
Madagascar (presidential and parliamentary elections in November).
Mauritania (National Assembly elections in September).
Democratic Republic of Congo (presidential and legislative elections in December).

Veteran journalist Kevin Z. Smith says that when voters are heading to the polls, the job of journalists is “educating the citizenry … with information so they can make appropriate decisions.” With the pressures, reporters face through censorship, bribes, and threats against their lives, that job isn’t always easy.

Smith, after 25 years in professional journalism, is now the director of the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism at Ohio State University. He has coached independent journalists in Uganda and Sierra Leone.

Smith has voiced alarm at the fact that many news media outlets are now controlled by government, corporate or private interest groups that pay reporters to amplify their views to voters without disclosing their financial connections.

In a democracy, the press should “serve as a watchdog on the government and inform the citizens so they can make the appropriate decisions about their government and their way of life,” he said.

Addressing journalists, he said that “if you chase any other interest, if that is not your motive, and your motive is to see that certain people get elected and to report in a way that is not going to be accurate and is not going to be fair, then you’re not serving your function as a journalist.”

If there is “a time in which the press needs to step up and be accountable and do the right thing by being accurate and being fair, it’s absolutely, positively during an election process,” he said. “Otherwise, you’re cheating the citizens of information. You’re cheating them out of opportunities to make decisions that affect them.”

Glossary

to vote (v) - to make a formal choice on matters of administration or other democratic activities

legislative (adj) - Making, or having the power to make, a law or laws; lawmaking; - distinguished from the executive: as, a legislative act, a legislative body.

journalism (n) - The aggregating, writing, editing, and presenting of news or news articles for widespread distribution for the purpose of informing the audience.

referendum (n) - A direct popular vote on a proposed law or constitutional amendment.

censor (v) - to remove objectionable content from correspondence or public media, either by legal criteria or with discretionary powers

bribe (n) - Something (usually money) given in exchange for influence or as an inducement to dishonesty

threat (n) - An expression of intent to injure or punish another.

watchdog (n) - a person or organization that monitors and publicizes the behavior of others (individuals, corporations, governments) to discover undesirable activity.

motive (n) - An incentive to act; a reason for doing something; anything that prompted a choice of action

accountability (n) - Obliged, when called upon, to answer with accuracy

© 2019. For the Press, Elections are a Test of Accountability for the AE ETeacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and administered by FHI 360. This work is an adaptation of For the Press, Elections are a Test of Accountability by ShareAmerica.gov. Adapted content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, except where noted. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/