Karachi, Feb 7

The Paris-based organisation Reporters Sans Frontiers (Reporters Without Borders) have made public their recent finding that the state-owned broadcaster PTVs coverage of the parliamentary election campaign has been significantly biased in granting more airtime to those political parties which support President Pervez Musharraf and the federal government. The report revealed that political parties allied with the President were the subject of 84.9 percent of the political items in the four daily news programs that were monitored from 28 January to 2 February.

In addition to the air-time bias, RSF also noted that the comments that accompanied reports concerning the PML (Q) were always positive. Its rallies for example were always referred to as “popular” or “mass” meetings, while the tone used for the reports on opposition parties was more neutral. When questioned about the bias, a member of the PTV staff said “We cover the political parties when they have activities and the PML (Q) organises more events than the others. We have a programme on the elections in the afternoon in which everyone has a chance to speak. Then, in the news programmes, we concentrate on the leading politicians.” Speaking on condition of anonymity, another member of the PTV staff said thestation had been instructed not to cover all the candidates with complete fairness.

“During his recent European visit, President Musharraf insisted that the elections would be free and fair, but the absence of fairness in the coverage provided by the only national terrestrial broadcast channel shows that this is not yet the case,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement here on Thursday. “The electoral commission and the federal government must quickly intervene so that the PTV grants the same air-time to the different political parties.”

-PPI