Media biased in election runoff, watchdog says

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.