Media in Election Campaign

Favouring the Favourites

AIM Banja Luka, 1 October, 1998

In the past parliamentary elections in Republika Srpska, media played the main role in the campaign. An illusion was created that they were the key condition for building a political image and that a good image in the media was sufficient to win the elections.

The struggle for the media had started much before the elections. The ruling coalition (Serb National Alliance, the Socialist Party and the Party of Independent Social Democrats) mobilized state media for its political objectives ever since it had come to power. Because of that, the opposition was forced to pursue its propaganda against them in the manner the latter had done while they had been in power. In order to prove to the voters the proportions of totalitarianism of the current authorities they used examples and even the vocabulary which the opposition had once used against them.

The ruling parties, united for the elections and after them into coalition called Harmony, very successfully repeated the error of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS). Copying the wrongly done homework and thanks to the absolute control of the media, they did not expose themselves too much as representatives of political organizations, but tried to use as much as possible the shield of state duties and in this way show the people that "The state, it is we!" Instead of laying numerous corner stones, as Gojko Klickovic used to do, they opend gas-stations, village bridges and transformer stations, and the picture of Momcilo Krajisnik in Glas srpski was successfully replaced by that of prime minister Dodik.

Contrary to its predecessors, the current authorities had double support of the media - all the media which call themselves independent and which used to criticize the SDS, mostly financed by the international community, immoderately supported their favourites in power. They were accompanied by "state means of information", which competed with the former which would be "better" in the support.

The strategic objective of the election campaign on Serb Television (SRT) fitted into general strategy of destruction of ethnic parties. Along with the "international supervisors", the campaign was assisted by special "producers" from the USA and other countries with "developed democracy", and "instructors" or representatives of international democratic media worked with political candidates. Even Television Simic which until then could have been distinguished for its lack of any program conception, was fitted to meet the needs of the favoured party.

In order not to leave anything to chance, on the eve of the election campaign, a political coup was carried out by the government, that is, by its ministry of information, in 16 local radio stations. At the height of the campaign, this same ministry "disciplined" the Serb news agency by suspending its operation, replacing the management and moving the seat from Pale to Bijeljina. All that caused disgust and ridicule in the international community, but there was no sharp reactions because interests of their and election favourites was at stake.

The rules introduced by the OSCE about equal accessibility were supposed to be a screen for preventing criticism of powerful opposition and to silence minor parties for which media would have been inaccessible had it not been for these rules.

The SDS and the Radicals responded to this challenge in the same way as two years ago they were parried by the leading opposition forces - the League for Peace and Progress headed by the Socialists and the Democratic Patriotic Block led by the then mayor of Banja Luka, Predrag Radic. This meant organization of various public debates and rallies which compensated for the lack of time on television (and support of other media, of course). The ruling coalition did the same, but their public debates were not so effective as the deafening roar of the media.

The ruling coalition was present in the media to such an extent that it was possible to simply put an equation mark with the time of the rule of the SDS. It is hard to tell whether the media advisors recommended any other approach, but it was quite evident that there was fear not to give a single second for the appearance of political opponents. If managers of the campaign in media believed that this would help the ruling coalition, negative counter-effects should be attributed to their bad calculations.

Appointment of political and media advisors in headquarters of favoured political forces did not yield the expected results. Some of them, instead of dealing with the media and their role in obective promotion turned into political advisors with poor judgement of the situation based on a list of good wishes but without real input data.

It turned out that it would be necessary to redefine the role of the media in an election campaign in order to transform them from propaganda to truly democratic ones.

Dejan Novakovic