Cash prizes for local-body election reporting

An independent media development non-governmental organisation, the Intermedia, on Tuesday gave three cash prizes to media persons who, according to it, met the standards while reporting local-body elections. In a bid to maintain quality and standard in media reporting on government electoral reforms and local election issues, the Intermedia launched a pilot project funded by the European Union.
Chief of Intermedia, Adnan Rehmat said after general elections of 2008, the EU Observers Mission suggested 83 recommendations to ensure free and fare elections in future. The capacity building of media person for coverage of elections was one of them. He said the pilot project targeted three tiers of media reporting. At first stage, Intermedia approached the decision makers of media groups. We provided advocacy on how elections reporting could be improved through in-house changes, Adnan said.
The second component was to establish a comprehensive system for monitoring election reporting output. The pilot project enabled them to judge, at every point in the electoral cycle, the balance of reporting and relate that balance to the output that would follow. At the last stage, the district level reporting on election was to be encouraged and train them on the subject.
Talking about the media landscape overview and relevancy to elections, he said that the size of media was not the same which was seen during the elections 2002. At that time, the live electronic coverage and number of local media stations were not available. The real time live election coverage and setting up huge radio stations were the hallmark of 2008 elections.
Representative of Democracy international European Union in Islamabad said that political pressure must not be given any consideration in reporting elections and capacity of media persons at district level must be improved. She said it was their understanding that media was not only facing political and security pressures as well as their work was not recognised. Later, the awards were distributed among the winners who were selected out of 400 nominees.