01 Sep 2024

Assistant Minister for State President, Honourable Boitumelo Gofhamodimo, has told Parliament that political parties and the Department of Broadcasting Services have agreed on standard operating guidelines for this year’s election coverage.

Assistant Minister Gofhamodimo said this answering a parliamentary question recently.

She said that followed a stakeholder engagement forum between Department of Broadcasting Services and all political parties on August 24 at Mass Media Complex to agree and operationalise the standard operating guidelines for the election coverage.

“These guidelines were endorsed by all political parties at this forum. So far, nothing has changed, the agreed guidelines remain applicable and compliance to these guidelines continue in earnest,” she said.

She added that television schedules by nature were not static because they may change any time due to editorial decisions, content rights, technical issues and regulatory compliance.

“As such some regular radio or television programmes may be disrupted to allow coverage of other programmes that may not have been schedule. One such example, was that when Parliament was in progress where normal programming was altered to pave way for parliamentary debates,” she said.

Also, she indicated that last year, unforeseen technical difficulties impeded Btv’s ability to broadcast the programme and that unfortunately denied opposition parties’ coverage during their national congress in July this year.

“There is no reason to doubt the fairness of the upcoming general elections. In the interest of fairness and transparency, all political parties, jointly with the Departments of Broadcasting and Information Services have recently developed the 2024 Election coverage plan. All political parties and the departments agreed on the content and political events to be covered in all the phases of the election, pre- election period, during election and post-election phases,” she said.

The plan, she said included the ongoing radio and television debates where all political parties were invited to take part.

She added that the broadcasters had also agreed with political parties that all launches done by party presidents would be covered as well as launches of party manifestos.

She also told Parliament that the two state broadcasters are guided by high journalism ideals contained in the department’s editorial guidelines. 

Sefhare-Ramokgonami MP, Dr Kesitegile Gobotswang had asked the minister to update Parliament on the current policy on live coverage of political parties by Radio Botswana and Botswana Television.

Dr Gobotswang asked the minister if she was aware that some of the regular Radio Botswana and Botswana Television programmes were disrupted to allow live coverage of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) national council and extra-ordinary national congress in August last year.

He wanted to know why such a dispensation was not extended to opposition parties during their national conferences in July last year.

He also wanted to know whether future elections would be fair under the circumstances of unfair coverage of political parties by state media. Ends