The media produced “disproportionate and inequitable” coverage of the government and political parties in October, according to the Guyana Elections Commission’s Media Monitoring Unit (MMU), which also cited the Kaieteur News for printing racially divisive information.
In its report for the period October 1, 2011 to October 31, 2011, which was released yesterday, the MMU said the measurements of “positive, negative and neutral coverage” being given to certain parties by television newscasts and the hard news sections of daily newspapers were “troubling.” The MMU identified two breaches by Kaieteur News and the use of opinion polls as news items in both broadcast and print media as issues to be urgently addressed to bring the media in line with the media code for the November 28 general elections.
“…[T]he trend detected over the past month (or thereabout) is that some newscasts have virtually morphed into veritable propaganda machines for political parties, while, in the print media, the offerings in the news section of two (2) of the dailies, read more