Kazakh Media for Fair and Stable Elections
The President of Kazakhstan dissolved the country's lower house of parliament in November 2011 and called for early parliamentary elections in January 2012, instead of August 2012. Political parties were left with little time to prepare for the election which would take place in the midst of a rapidly shifting political picture with various changes in the different parties’ leaderships.
The media has an important role to play ensuring fair and equitable coverage of the electoral and post-electoral process. The early poll and the actual public information void can be compensated by media training, roundtables, and media monitoring. Longer term, the media can also support the process of ensuring that lessons learned from the coverage of this election are not lost for the benefit of future polls.
Pre-election phase: Increasing the quantity and quality of the electoral process coverage in independent Kazakh media: election reporting training for Media professionals; reference guides for journalists covering the electoral campaign in paper and online formats; apolitical press conferences for informing the population on the polling process; production of electoral talk show TV programmes on topics such as corruption, rule of law and access to information.
Post-election phase: Increasing the role of independent media and creating long-term best practice models for the media as agents for conflict mitigation and the promotion of stability: sub-grants for TV companies in addition to roundtables on media standards, regulation and lessons learned from other countries; workshop on Conflict Sensitive Journalism.
Supporting Civil Society and the media in fostering an environment that ensures fair and equitable electoral coverage:Research is being carried out to determine the media’s strengths and weaknesses which help identify how to focus their capacity building efforts. It allows the media to obtain information about their audience penetration and the audience’s perception of their role in the electoral process.
The project is directed towards editorial and management teams of three broadcasting companies, journalists from all 15 regions of Kazakhstan and civil society organization representatives.
Final beneficiaries are the Kazakh population at large, especially TV audiences, accounting for an estimated 16 million people and 5 TV million viewers.
This project intends to help independent Kazakh media to contribute to and enhance the democratic electoral process, but also to enable the media to mitigate conflict and promote long term stability in the country whilst actively participating in the creation of long-term best practice models for the media’s role in future electoral processes.
