Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Published by
African Centre for Media Excellence
Plot 124 Nanjala Road (Bunga-Soya), off Ggaba Road
P. O Box 11283 Kampala, Uganda
Tel: +256393202351
info@acme.org
www.acme-ug.org
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Twitter: @ACME_Uganda
CopyrightACME 2016
Layout and Design
Harriet Anena
hanena@acme-ug.org
Cover Photo
Foreign Correspondents Association of Uganda
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This report is published with support from the Democratic Governance
Facility (DGF), which funded the African Centre for Media Excellences
project on monitoring media coverage of the 2016 elections. We are
grateful for the partnership with DGF.
ACME further thanks all the coders who tirelessly entered data and the
research assistants who recorded broadcast content throughout the life
of the project.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.....................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................7
The Media and Elections...............................................................................................9
Monitoring Media Coverage......................................................................................10
Media Coverage of Previous Elections..................................................................11
Monitoring/Research Questions.............................................................................13
METHODOLOGY..............................................................................................15
Scope of the Monitoring...........................................................................................15
Sample and Sampling Methods...............................................................................15
Methods of Data Collection.....................................................................................19
THE MEDIA ENVIRONMENT........................................................................22
Legal Framework...........................................................................................................23
Media Ownership and Diversity...............................................................................25
New Media........................................................................................................................27
Standards and Quality of Reporting......................................................................30
Experience and Institutional Memory.................................................................31
Freedom to Report......................................................................................................31
QUANTITATIVE RESULTS..............................................................................34
Volume of Election Stories........................................................................................34
Space and Time Allocated to Election Coverage...............................................36
Type of Election.............................................................................................................38
Most Covered Presidential Candidate..................................................................40
A Special Look at the Public Broadcaster..........................................................43
Pictures of Presidential Candidates......................................................................45
Front-Page News Coverage of Presidential Candidates..............................48
Followers.............................................................................................................71
Following.............................................................................................................73
Tweets...............................................................................................................74
Interactions.............................................................................................................76
ELECTION DAY AND POST-ELECTION COVERAGE..................................81
Government Moves Against Social Media..........................................................81
Conclusion.........................................................................................................96
Recommendations.....................................................................................................101
APPENDIX......................................................................................................104
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Key dates and activities of the 2016 general elections
DATE
ACTIVITY
9 November 2015
2-3 December 2015
23 December 2015
16 February 2016
18 February 2016
1 September 2015
30 March 2016
monthly reports that were then discussed with stakeholders ranging from
senior media managers to political party representatives. We looked
at content in a number of newspapers, on the micro-blogging platform
Twitter, and on several radio and TV stations. Findings in the ACME
monthly reports were cited by both sides in the petition challenging the
outcome of the presidential election in the Supreme Court.
The results show that although the media (especially newspapers and
television) paid a good deal of attention to the campaigns and actual voting
and produced an impressive volume of stories, in general the coverage
fell short on several measures of quality. However, some media houses
improved their performance as the electioneering progressed.
The results show that Mr Museveni was covered the most in newspapers,
on radio, and on television. Stories on the incumbent commanded 39%
The results also show that journalists often did not question the claims
and promises made by candidates. This problem was particularly
pronounced on television, where only 22% of the stories interrogated
candidate claims or promises. Newspapers did slightly better with 38%,
but overall media could have done better in order to give citizens the
information they needed to make informed electoral choices.
Coverage of Elections, and the need to educate police as well as the public
on the role of the media in elections.
This report is divided into seven chapters. Chapter One is the introduction.
Chapter Two provides a detailed look at the methodology and approach
employed. Chapter Three explores the environment within which media
in Uganda operated during the project period. Chapter Four provides
detailed results from the quantitative content analysis of media coverage
from September 2015 to February 2016. Chapter Five looks at how
the major candidates used Twitter to campaign. Chapter Six is about
Election Day and post-election coverage while the final chapter offers
conclusions and recommendations.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
African Centre for Media Excellence (ACME) monitored media coverage
of the 2016 elections from September 2015 to May 2016 when the
president-elect was sworn in. This specialised effort is part of the
monitoring work of the Citizens Election Observers Network-Uganda
(CEON-U), also funded by DGF. CEON-U comprises 18 civil society
organisations led by the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative. The
overall objective of CEON-U was to enhance the integrity of the election
process through deterring and exposing irregularities. CEON-Us specific
objectives were:
1. To regularly and objectively document and expose issues related to
or affecting the integrity of the electoral process.
For an electoral process to qualify as free and fair, not only must the
election unfold in adequate political and administrative conditions,
but citizens must also have access to sufficient information about the
parties, candidates and voting procedures to ensure that they will make
an enlightened and valid choice. Elections will only be free if all players
candidates, political parties, citizens, civil society and, of course,
journalists can express themselves on all matters of public concern.
The media play five essential roles in the electoral process:
2 Marie-Soleil Frre (2010). The Media and Elections in Post-Conflict Central African Countries. Brussels: University
of Brussels.
10
Although both the Constitution and electoral laws provide for equal
access to candidates on state or public media, in all previous elections,
the latter have been accused of paying disproportionate attention to
the activities of the incumbent and ruling party at the expense of the
challengers and the opposition. This practice denies the viewing/
listening public access to adequate information against which to judge
all sides in the election.
Denial of access to state/public media by opposition candidates
11
It has been said that voters are the most critical players in elections.
Unfortunately, it has been pointed out that media coverage in
Uganda, as in many other countries, tends to pay far more attention to
the candidates and their parties than to the voters. Lost in this kind of
reporting, for instance, are the issues that matter most to the voters as
well as their own evolving evaluation of the electoral process.
Attempts by political actors, especially those in government, to influence
visuals in newspapers and on television
12
Inaccurate reporting.
Bribery of journalists.
Self-censorship.
13
In the next chapter, we lay out the approach and methodology that we
employed to answer these questions.
CHAPTER TWO
14
METHODOLOGY
This chapter presents the scope of the monitoring exercise, the sample
and sampling methods, methods of data collection as well as the tools
that we used.
Scope of the monitoring
15
exposed to.
Print media
All the major national and regional publications (eight newspapers and
one magazine) were included to ensure a balanced representation, to
the extent possible, of every major language group. There were five
English-language publications and one each in key regional languages
and language groupings: Luganda, Ateso, Luo, and Runyakitara. Five
of the eight newspapers in this sample (New Vision, Bukedde, Etop,
Rupiny and Orumuri) are published by the Vision Group, a listed
company whose ownership is split more or less equally between the
government and private shareholders. The nine print titles together
account for nearly all mainstream print media circulation in Uganda.
The Vision Group publications arguably control about three-quarters of
the national readership or market.
The titles that made up the newspaper sample, with their publication
cycles, are:
1. New Vision (daily; national)
Television
The five TV channels included in the sample collectively cover the whole
country. All but one broadcast primarily in English. Bukedde broadcasts
in Luganda and is one of the platforms owned by the Vision Group.
Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC) is the public broadcaster. The
rest of the stations are privately owned. The channels included in the TV
samples are:
1. Bukedde
2. NBS
3. NTV
4. UBC
5. WBS
Radio
The radio stations selected for monitoring collectively cover the entire
country and represent Ugandas seven major regions: Kampala, central,
eastern, western, south-western, northern, and North-Western/West
Nile. This sample constitutes about 13% of the 250 or so stations in
operation across the country. The selected radio stations generally
accommodate all audience profiles as defined by social class, language,
religion, ethnicity, and geography/geo-politics. Except UBC, the public
broadcaster, all the other channels are either private, faith-based, or
community radio stations. The stations that make up the radio sample
are presented on Page 18 by region.
17
MEDIA
FREQUENCY
Kampala (5)
Capital Radio
KFM
Top Radio
Simba FM
UBC Blue Channel
FM 91.3
FM 93.3
FM 89.6
FM 97.3
FM 98
Baba
Open Gate
Rock Mambo
Kioga Veritas
Voice of Teso
Signal FM
FM 87.7
FM 103.2
FM 106.8
FM 91.5
FM 88.4
FM 88.1
Central (5)
Eastern (6)
Western (5)
South-Western (2)
Northern (4)
18
Radio Sapientia
Voice of Africa
Central Broadcasting Services
Buddu
Spice FM
Kasese Guide
Voice of Toro
Bushenyi
Bunyoro Broadcasting Services
Radio West
Rukungiri FM
Voice of Kigezi
Mighty Fire
Dokolo FM
Mega FM
Rhino
FM 94.8
FM 92.3
FM 89.2
FM 101.9
FM 89.9
FM 100.5
FM 101
FM 92.2
FM 98.2
FM 100.2
FM 96.7
FM 89.5
FM 91.5
FM 102.4
FM 102.1
FM 96.1
FM 89.1
FM 94.1
FM 100.9
FM 87.8
FM 88.7
FM 90.9
Social media
Twitter was preferred to other social media platforms on pragmatic
grounds. The objectives were to ascertain the extent to which the main
presidential candidates used Twitter as an alternative media form
during and after the campaign season as well as to assess candidates
use of Twitter to listen to and respond to queries, demands and debates
from the electorate online.
Methods of data collection
The research (monitoring) questions outlined in the Introduction section will be the foundation of the media
content analysis, which will be based on a systematic coding scheme.
19
20
For radio news/current affairs, the monitoring focused on the two most
important daily news bulletins broadcast around the top of the hour
during the morning and evening prime listening times between 7 a.m.
9 a.m. and 7 p.m. 9 p.m.
21
CHAPTER THREE
Radio remains the biggest source of information for most Ugandans (55%
of households receive information through radio, according to the 2014
census report)5 although newspapers are influential agenda-setters for
the public, political class, as well as other media.
Although Uganda has some of the most vibrant media in east and
southern Africa, in the last five years the country has been characterised
by Freedom House as partly free. In one of its more recent reports, the
international press freedom watchdog concluded that although the
countrys constitution provides for freedom of expression and press
freedom, several laws negate these guarantees, and the government
continues to crack down on critical journalists and media houses using
both subtle and blatant methods.6
5 http://www.ubos.org/onlinefiles/uploads/ubos/NPHC/2014%20National%20Census%20Main%20Report.
pdf
22
Legal framework
The Constitution of Uganda provides for the rights to freedom of expression
as well as access to information, although the enabling laws continued
to attract criticism for derogating from these constitutional guarantees.
The media in Uganda are governed mainly by the Press and Journalist
Act (Cap 105), the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation Act, 2005, and the
Uganda Communications Act, 2013, which merged the Electronic Media
Act (Cap 104) and the Uganda Communications Act, 1997.
These laws provide for statutory regulation and establish the Media
Council as the primary regulator of the print media but also aspects
of broadcast media, and the Uganda Communications Commission
as the regulator of electronic media and telecommunications. All
journalists are supposed to be licensed by the Media Council, which is
by law required to recognise only those enrolled under the National
Institute of Journalists of Uganda (NIJU). Journalists require university
degrees to become full members of NIJU. These regulations have not
been followed strictly in the last 15 years although they continue to
attract criticism from media freedom watchers, who also fault Ugandas
regulatory regime for not having the necessary independence from the
government.
The fourth Schedule of the Press and Journalist Act provides for a
professional code of ethics that lists nine commandments:
1. No journalist shall disseminate information or an allegation without
establishing its correctness or truth.
25
See http://www.ucc.co.ug/files/downloads/Q3-Market%20Report%20%20for%20Third%20Quarter%20
-%20July-September%202015.pdf.
26
show/-/688334/2803274/-/kcvksr/-/index.html
suspended the journalists involved in the talk show. There have been
similar occurrences over the years.11
13 http://www.researchictafrica.net/countries/uganda/Uganda_Communications_Act_2013.pdf
14 http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Mirundi-back-on-air--attacks-Mbabazi-Mao/-/688334/2988354/-/u2bd9j/-/index.html
15
https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/01/10/keep-people-uninformed/pre-election-threats-free-expression-and-association-uganda
16 http://www.ucc.co.ug/files/downloads/Annual%20Market%20Industry%20Report%202014-15-%20October%2019-2015.pdf
27
18 http://www.contadorharrison.com/social-media-use-in-uganda/
19 http://www.internetworldstats.com/africa.htm
20 http://www.internetworldstats.com/africa.htm
21 http://www.observer.ug/news-headlines/38278-who-s-tom-voltaire-okwalinga-tvo
22 https://www.facebook.com/tom.okwalinga?fref=ts
23 https://www.facebook.com/Tvo-Uganda-654610647943658/?fref=ts
24 http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Lawyers-demand-release-of-social-media-critic-/-/688334/2747382/-/r3f7qaz/-/index.html
28
Social media usage was a big deal during the election period, by journalists politicians and
the general public. Courtesy Photo.
29
Paper Presented at Breakfast Meeting for Media Owners Hosted by the Civil Society Capacity Building Programme. Kampala, November 15, 2006
30
Years of Journalism: African media since Ghanas independence. (pp. 97-109). Johannesburg: African Editors Forum,
Highway Africa, and Media Foundation for West Africa.
31
32
31
http://www.monitor.co.ug/Elections/UCC-shutdown-of-social-media-backfires/-/2787154/3083658/-/
ax1g1h/-/index.html
33
CHAPTER FOUR
34
* We don't provide disaggregated results by radio stations here and in most other cases because of the sheer
number of stations monitored.
35
36
37
Type of election
The presidential election was the most covered by all three media
platforms monitored. Of the total 10,350 election stories captured on
all platforms, 62% were on the presidential elections, 20.6% on the
parliamentary and 17.4% on both elections.
Figure 3: Type of election
38
Of all the media platforms monitored, television, at 70.8%, paid far more
attention to the presidential than the parliamentary elections. Radio on
the other hand paid significantly more attention to the parliamentary
election. This should perhaps not be surprising given that radio is more
localised than newspapers and television.
Figure 3-1: Type of election by media type
39
40
41
A trend analysis shows that Mr Mbabazi was the most covered presidential
candidate in both September and October 2015, the period before the
nominations and campaigns. Once the campaigns kicked off, incumbent
Museveni dominated the coverage until the elections.
Figure 4-3: Trend for most covered presidential candidate by newspapers
42
43
44
45
New Vision (43.9%) and its sister publications, Bukedde (50.4%) and
Orumuri (35.1%), published far more pictures of Mr Museveni than
those of the other candidates. Although Mr Museveni led in most of the
private papers as well, Daily Monitor and The Independent provided
better balance in the use of candidate pictures as the chart below shows.
Figure 5-1: Pictures of candidates overall by newspaper
46
47
48
However, New Vision and all its sister papers Bukedde, Etop, Rupiny, and
Orumuri gave Mr Museveni more front-page coverage than any other
candidate as the chart below shows. Daily Monitor provided equitable
front-page coverage to the three main contenders for president, with
Mr Museveni and Dr Besigye tying at 28.3% and Mr Mbabazi following
closely at 27.9%.
Figure 6-1: Most covered candidate on front page by publication
49
50
32 A single story can have multiple themes. In such cases, these themes were all coded.
51
52
The findings show that issues that citizens have consistently defined as
the most important public problems requiring government attention
education, health, infrastructure, employment, and corruption did
not get as much coverage as the politics.
Tone of coverage
The tone of coverage remained predominantly neutral across all three
media types monitored from September 2015 to February 2016.
Figure 8: Story tone by media type
53
54
Issues vs Personalities
All over the world, election coverage is often faulted for paying too much
attention to personalities at the expense of issues. Our results show
that the media in Uganda, to their credit, largely focused on the issues
although a significant amount of time and space was still dedicated to
personalities.
Figure 9: Issues vs Personalities
55
Reporting approach
The reporting approach describes the style and methods that journalists
employed in their coverage of the elections. Four approaches, namely
conventional, interpretive, enterprise and investigation, were monitored.
56
57
58
59
The findings show that most stories by newspapers, TV and radio stations
monitored contained background and context. However, the number of
stories without background and context was still significant.
Figure 11: Background and context by media type
60
A trend analysis shows that as the country moved closer to the elections,
the proportion of stories that did not contain background and context
increased across both newspapers and television. For radio, the number
fell in February but the percentage (47.8) was in fact higher than that in
the other platforms. It is possible that having covered the election story
for several months, many journalists no longer felt the need to repeat the
primary background.
Figure 11-1: Trend on background & context Newspapers
61
62
63
64
65
Sourcing: Numbers
It is generally accepted that the more human sources a story has, the more
likely that it will speak to a diversity of issues from various viewpoints.
The findings show that across all media platforms, voters were exposed
to far more single-sourced stories than multiple-sourced ones. And in
most cases, those sources were candidates or party officials.
Figure 13: Number of sources by media type
66
Sourcing: Gender
Newspapers, television, and radio all relied heavily on male sources. Once
again, radio was the biggest culprit on gender imbalance in sourcing. Only
12.9% of the election story sources at the 33 radio stations monitored,
were women. Newspapers did slightly better overall, but only 15.8% of
their sources in election stories were women.
Figure 14: Gender of sources by media type
Informants from the media and civil society attributed the glaring
imbalance on reluctance of female sources to speak to the media, a
perception among many journalists that politics is a male domain, and
that men are more informed than women. However, the trend also
reflected a wider lack of imagination by the media in trying to interest
women, who make up roughly half of the population, in a subject and a
contest that affects their lives.
67
Sourcing: Occupation
Presidential candidates were the most quoted sources across all media
platforms. Parliamentary candidates and party officials were also among
the top five categories of sources quoted in election stories across all
three media types. It was notable, however, that ordinary people were
also in the top five. Newspapers and television did especially well in
giving voice to ordinary people.
Figure 15: Sourcing by occupation by newspaper
68
69
70
CHAPTER FIVE
@KagutaMuseveni
DECEMBER JANUARY
FEBRUARY
MARCH
5.62%
5.38%
6.74%
4.37%
3.37%
32.22%
3.84%
5.19%
16.27%
10.67%
7.18%
20.06%
72
Following
This refers to the number of users a profile is following during a selected
time range. It is not unusual that there is a large difference between the
number of followers that a Twitter profile has, and the number of profiles
that it follows. The larger and more diverse your following, the wider the
subjects you have access to and the more likely you are to participate in
discussion, share information and respond to queries.
The findings show there was a significant difference in the approach
of candidates to receiving information through their Twitter timelines,
indicated by the number of profiles they followed.
Table 3: Total number of profiles followed by the candidates
Yoweri Museveni
Amama Mbabazi
Kizza Besigye
DECEMBER
JANUARY
FEBRUARY
MARCH
14
6,241
319
16
6,326
323
17
6,342
325
17
6,579
331
73
Tweets
Overall, @KagutaMuseveni sent out the highest number of tweets in
the period monitored. He sent 433 tweets, @AmamaMbabazi 353 and
@KizzaBesigye1 sent 175 tweets. As the figure below shows, candidate
Mbabazi sent more tweets in February while candidate Besigye was top
in March, during the period when he was mostly confined at his home
by state security.
Figure 17: Total number of tweets
74
JANUARY
5.4
FEBRUARY
4.9
MARCH
1.4
MBABAZI
0.4
8.6
4.1
0.2
BESIGYE
0.9
0.9
1.4
2.1
MUSEVENI
75
Interactions
Interactions denote both outgoing and incoming communication on
Twitter. Outgoing interactions are replies, retweets or mentions of
another user by the profile. Incoming interactions are replies, retweets
or mentions of the profile by other users. The retweet count is the
number of times the profile has been retweeted during a selected time
range, mention refers to total number of organic mentions made about
the profile during a selected time range, while influencers are the top
users most frequently interacting with the profile through individual
mentions.
Figure 18: Total number of interactions of each candidate on Twitter
76
77
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79
80
CHAPTER SIX
81
82
but many journalists did not ask the questions they should have asked. Of
particular concern was the status of the electronic results transmission
system. There was scanty public information about the system how
exactly it worked and what was to be expected of it. Not until the hearing
of Mr Amama Mbabazis Supreme Court petition challenging President
Musevenis re-election did the public get a real sense of the workings of
the results management system.
Although the media widely covered the voting delays in Kampala and
Wakiso districts, there was never a full investigation into what actually
happened. Given the geographical centrality of polling stations in
these districts and their locations so close to the Electoral Commission
headquarters, it was inconceivable that the delivery and distribution of
voting materials could have been so poorly planned. The result was that
voters in some places had to wait in queues for as long as eight hours
in order to cast their votes. Many gave up entirely as a result of the
lack of transparency and timely information on the part of the election
administrators.
83
With time, the actions of the police have blurred the line between routine
law and order enforcement and response to genuine national security
threats. Many are now puzzled by the similarity between the methods
the police use to deal with political dissenters and those that are usually
associated in the fight against terrorism. The general tendency to cover
the run-ins between the police and the defiance activists as normal
85
political drama, has distracted the media from interrogating the dangers
of criminalising legitimate political differences and treating them as
threats to national security.
That said, the medias sustained interest in Dr Besigyes arrest and
detention after the elections and the inauguration of President
Musevenis new term, has kept alive the unanswered questions about
Ugandas constitutional trajectory. The media have provided substantial
space and time for crucial debates about resolving the impasse over the
political and electoral reforms needed to improve Ugandas democratic
culture.
The blocking of social media by government was a major setback for the media and several
Ugandans during the election period. Courtesy Photo
86
QUANTITATIVE RESULTS
Space and time dedicated to elections
The media continued to dedicate enormous space and time to the polls
on Election Day and beyond. From 18 February to 31 March, the nine
newspapers monitored dedicated 352,424cm2 to the election, whereas
the five television stations in the study, gave the electoral process 1,164
minutes. The election results and the petition filed by Mr Mbabazi were
covered quite extensively.
Figure 22: Share of different newspapers of space dedicated to elections
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
CHAPTER SEVEN
Yet, many of the same old challenges persisted. Too many stories were
single-sourced, and the conventional straight news reporting approach
(he said-she said) remained dominant. The dearth of enterprise and
investigation was compounded by the failure of many journalists to
interrogate the claims that the candidates made in their manifestos and
on the campaign trail. Without seriously taking candidates and their
parties to task about their plans for the country, the coverage continued
the tendency to treat elections as rituals that come around every five
years and not as moments for national reflection on the direction the
country should take.
96
97
3. The presidential race dominated the overall coverage of the elections, while the parliamentary elections took up less than a quarter
6. The study found that politics was the most dominantly covered
subject by newspapers, radio, and television. Although citizens
had identified education, health, infrastructure, employment, and
corruption as the main issues they wanted the government to act
upon, these did not see as much light of day as political machinations.
7. The media adopted a largely neutral tone in covering the elections,
notwithstanding that the main challengers, Mr Mbabazi and Dr
Besigye, experienced more instances of negative coverage than the
incumbent.
99
11. The claims and promises that candidates made largely went
unchecked as the media, especially television and radio, were poor
at interrogating these claims and promises. The failure to interrogate
the claims that candidates made in their manifestos and on the
campaign trail is a symptom of a larger tendency of letting politicians
set the agenda without holding them accountable.
100
13. The top three presidential candidates were active on Twitter but they
did not fully exploit the opportunity to engage their following. They
used Twitter as a space to provide information, but not to listen,
respond and debate.
Recommendations
101
102
Civil society and the public need to do more to hold the media
accountable during the electioneering season based on evidence such as
findings of media monitoring reports.
Finally, ACME intended this media monitoring project to document
whether coverage contributed to a free and fair election or subverted
the process. We also hoped that it would be a process of constructive
intervention whereby gaps in, and concerns about, coverage are
addressed before the elections.
We strongly believe that the monthly monitoring reports met the
latter objective, giving editors and journalists a credible and independent
assessment of their work that pointed out areas where more could be
done, and things that could be done better.
103
APPENDICES
104
105
106
107
108
Tone of coverage
Figure 30: Tone of coverage by newspaper
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110
111
Sourcing
Figure 32: Number of sources by newspaper
112
113
114
115
116
Sourcing
Figure 35: Number of sources by newspaper
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ACME 2016