Media feel the pressure before polls

NAMIBIAN State-funded media are more under pressure from Government and have had to fight more to keep their independence during the weeks before the upcoming elections than at normal times.

Leading Namibian journalists throughout the different Namibian media houses – private as well as Government-funded – agree on that fact, research by a senior student of the University of Applied Sciences of Osnabrück (Germany) revealed.Andreas Rothe conducted in-depth interviews with a dozen journalists, ranging from print to radio and TV. ‘While journalists of private media had to rely on second-hand experience, journalists of State media could confirm that complaints by Government officials and members of the ruling party went up noticeably during the pre-election period. At the same time they had to face opposition parties’ complaints about not being covered adequately,’ Rothe said.’This information is a by-product of my research mainly focusing on the choice of news in a more technical manner. ‘The main part is still to be analysed and published early next year.’Rothe’s sideline results coincide with the recent analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) stating that NBC TV news covers the ruling Swapo party extensively (83 per cent of the news on all the parties), while other parties are only covered very rarely. State-funded media in Namibia include NBC TV and Radio as well as the daily newspaper New Era and the news agency Nampa.