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Low volumes of political coverage, as well as the mostly neutral reporting on parties and their leaders, means it is unlikely that the Namibian press will have an impact on existing voting patterns and preferences. This is the key finding of a joint study conducted by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) in Windhoek, Media Tenor South Africa in Pretoria and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) in Namibia and into the role of the media in this year?s Namibian presidential and national assembly elections, which are scheduled to be held on Monday and Tuesday.

For the study the content of the political sections in six Namibian newspapers - The Namibian, Republikein, Allgemeine Zeitung, The Namibian Economist, Namibia Today and The Windhoek Observer - was analysed from September 1 to October 21 2004. According to the findings of the report, the elections are a ?non-event? because of the very low number of election-related articles and statements.

The study is part of Media Tenor South Africa?s ongoing research into how the media report on elections. In April this year, in an analysis of how leading South African media reported on the South African national election, Media Tenor found that the larger parties tended to receive more coverage, a finding replicated in the results for the situation in Namibia. The ruling South West African People?s Organisation (Swapo) received more than twice the coverage than the leading opposition Congress of Democrats (CoD) party under the leadership of Ben Ulenga.

According to the study, political parties contesting next week?s election see rallies ? and not the media - as the most effective way of disseminating their message. ?The low coverage of political parties and leaders suggests that politicians are not marketing themselves or their parties through newspapers,? says Christiaan Keulder, director of Democracy and Governance at the IPPR, and the author of the report. The approach from politicians was likely to be ?passive?, he says, with political leaders simply expecting the media to report on their rallies. According to Wadim Schreiner, Managing Director of Media Tenor South Africa, opposition parties in particular do not understand the mechanisms of the media and seem to believe that it is the media?s duty to report on them rather than proactively seek to provide policy information for the media to report on. ?Parties and leaders are wrong to assume that the coverage on a particular event or rally will lead to increased and improved coverage on the candidate or the political party. Instead, the parties should engage in a continuous dialogue with the media, and clearly this has not happened in Namibia?.

The only politician to grab the attention of the media was the outgoing President Sam Nujoma, with his likely successor and Nujoma?s most trusted confidant during the liberation struggle, Hifikepunye Lucas Pohamba, receiving the second-most coverage. According to the report, Nujoma?s dominance is ?a reflection of the personalised nature of much of Namibian politics?. Kosie Pretorius, the leader of the Monitor Action Group (MAG), which won less than one percent in the previous election, had the third best media profile because of his weekly media contributions.

The newspapers that were analysed did not, according to the study, appear to be biased towards any one particular party. Keulder notes the analysed newspapers did not ?hide? political articles or statements on those pages of a newspaper that are seldom read. Many of the articles on politics were prominently displayed. The newspapers, even those with close links to a single political party (e.g. Republikein and the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance) did not ?impose value judgements on parties or leaders?, the report says. Schreiner adds that the findings further underline the wrong assumption by some governments and political parties that certain media have a particular agenda towards them. ?The selective reading of newspapers from parties and candidates leads to an assumption, not based on empirical research, that media are biased and negative. In most instances, this is not the case, as Media Tenor?s research of both the South African elections in April and now the Namibian elections shows?.

The final research report, including media coverage up to the election, will be published after the elections on the 15th and 16th of November.