Long days, nights ahead but what are the issues?

The 2021 presidential campaign kicked off in earnest with the nomination on Monday and Tuesday of a record 11 candidates. Parliamentary and local government nominations had happened weeks earlier. If the colour, pomp and pageantry of the nomination exercise – of course peppered with a bit of stick and teargas – is anything to go by, the journalists covering the campaign trail will have their hands overflowing.

As is the norm in the presidential elections, the major media houses like Daily Monitor and NTV-Uganda attach a reporter and photographer to every candidate. These go around the country with the candidates’ teams, filing stories and sending photographs to the newsroom after a gruelling campaign day. The correspondents and stringers in the bureaus cover the parliamentary race and beef-up the team covering the presidential candidates when the candidate is in their locale.

It will not be any easier for editors on the election desk in the newsroom. They will sit long hours waiting for copy, sifting through it and deciding which is the big and small story, which requires fact-checking and further reporting, et cetera.

So this is the season of the long days and long nights for journalists, many of whom will be operating on shoe-string budgets. Election coverage is a very expensive affair and even the big media houses do feel the pinch.

It is doubly difficult this time round considering that the industry has been hugely disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic that saw revenues come down to a trickle. But it is a responsibility to the public that the media shall carry; bringing the campaign messages of the different candidates.

In the Wednesday edition, the Daily Monitor had to manage a delicate balance of putting a photo of every presidential candidate that had been nominated the previous day on the cover. That is seven of them! All through the campaign, the editors will walk a delicate line ensuring the presentation of all candidates is as balanced as possible. In the last presidential election, one of the main challenges for editors was use of photographs whereby candidates were competing on perceptions of the size of crowds they pull. With the benefit of drone photography, candidates’ campaign teams were able to manipulate angles of shots to create a sense of hundreds of thousands of people at a rally where in reality, there where sometimes a handful!

That may not be an issue this time considering Covid-19 public health restrictions bar holding of large rallies. What will remain the same, however, is the mudslinging, the lies, misinformation, etc, that journalists must not be seen to uphold and spread. Fact-checking will help debunk many of these so the public are not led down the line by some politicians that often stop at nothing to get at their opponents or to mislead the public.

Most importantly, however, the public will be looking to learning from the media coverage what the issues in this election are – that is if it matters anyway! So far, most of the candidates have been long on rhetoric and short on substance. As the candidates complete the motions of unveiling their election manifestos, the issues may perhaps become clearer. It is the media’s role to sift through this maze and help define the issues for the average voter.

Conversely, the media also needs to define for the presidential candidates the issues they [journalists] perceive to be occupying the minds of the citizens at this point in time. At every opportunity, these should be put to the candidates to explain how they will handle them. Which of these issues feature in the manifestos and what do the candidates promise to do?

Best of luck!

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READERS HAVE YOUR SAY

Gerald Nkomejimana: One, your story of President Museveni inspecting equipment at Musa Body engineering firm in Katwe (Daily Monitor, October 23) had been published by other media on October 21. That is two days after! Why do you publish such old stories, moreover about the President? You also do not publish local stories, especially from Kigezi and south western part of Uganda. Is it distance? Do you lack reporters?

Two, can Spark TV start giving us news bulletins on Saturday and Sunday? We Spark TV viewers need to be updated every time including weekends. I have not seen any change ever since I raised that issue with you.

Public Editor: Thank you for raising very pertinent issues. I have shared this feedback with management.

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