Media biased in election runoff, watchdog says

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A number of media outlets with large audiences and/or readerships were biased in favor of one of the two candidates in Monday's presidential election, the largest overseas poll monitoring team said on Thursday.

In its report on the election runoff, the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM) said that in the run up to election day, the press, especially some electronic media, began to favor one candidate over the other as indicated in their unbalanced news coverage.

In the weeks prior to voting day a local news station appeared partial in favor of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, a radical departure from its earlier standpoint which had blatantly favored rival candidate Megawati Soekarnoputri, said mission chief observer Glyn Ford.

He added that the news channel was not the only media outlet that favored Megawati.

The monitoring team also found that the state television station showed a pronounced bias in favor of Megawati by devoting disproportionate amounts of coverage to positive reviews of her activities and achievements as the incumbent president.

"It also ran anti-Susilo ads during the campaign cooling-off period," the mission said in the report.

The EU-EOM said that a national newspaper with the largest circulation also showed indications of favoring the incumbent.

A Jakarta-based radio station with the largest network reaching most of the country's remote regions was also included on the list of alleged biased media.

The mission stated that the highly restrictive campaign regulations frequently led to efforts both by the media and the candidates' campaign teams to circumvent the rules. "It was done through hidden and indirect candidate promotion or negative advertising," it said.

However, the EU-EOM said that, in general, the media played a positive role in disseminating information about the candidates and various election activities, and in unveiling campaign violations.

In its media monitoring, the mission employed a methodology designed by the Dusseldorf, Germany-based European Institute for the Media (EIM), which had been used to monitor over 50 elections in Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and Africa.

In the report, the mission also praised the election runoff for proceeding peacefully and complying largely with international standards.

"The second round of the presidential election is the culminating event of an historic electoral year that firmly consolidated the democratic reforms in Indonesia," it said.

The mission deployed 224 observers, the largest foreign monitoring team, to the country's 32 provinces to monitor the balloting, vote counting and its result aggregation.