Media + Elections: An Elections Reporting Handbook

From the introduction of this handbook for journalists in emerging democracies: "Elections are a great challenge for the media...This handbook offers journalists basic preparation for meeting these challenges. It is designed for countries where democracy is fragile or a new idea. Every country has different election rules and campaign issues, but there are some worldwide standards for an election to be considered free and fair. There are rights and responsibilities every professional journalist should know. There are also skills journalists can use to help voters become better informed. That is the intention of this handbook - to help journalists enable the people to decide."

This handbook is written in plain language to aid readers with English as a second language and to increase the ease of translation - and is provided in French and Arabic. Topics, taken from the Table of Contents, include:

• democracy and the media, which gives the most important features of what makes an election democratic, including this formula: no free press = no democracy;
• three elements of an election, which are parties and candidates, issues, and a voting process;
• good journalism in election reporting, including accuracy, impartiality, and responsibility - and excluding defamation, derivative information, malicious intent, and corruption;
• the election process, its laws, its commission, and the media's watchdog role - including a discussion of what watchdogs watch for;
• campaign strategies of the candidates and parties, including how they use the media to present their choice of images;
• covering campaigns, including the content of speeches and what readers deserve to know about them; and popularity and opinion polls, and the unbiased reporting of their results;
• voters-voice reporting, describing a new way of using voters' thinking as a source of news, including charts of samples of voter-voice reporting;
• interviewing politicians, including three good questions to ask and some useful interview tips and preparation;
• monitoring election reporting, which includes why media "watch dogging" is essential to prevention of corruption and election errors; and
• campaign safety, suggesting a declaration from each party and candidate in regard to respecting and promoting journalist safety.