Côte d'Ivoire: RSF concerned over unethical electoral reporting

Talk of "massacres and carnage" and "unpunished genocide" by incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo on Le Patriote's front page, accusations against candidate Alassane Ouattara of "protecting those who robbed the peasants" on page seven of Notre Voie and references to "attack plans" by pro-Gbagbo former soldiers preparing "disturbances for the night of 29 October" on page 11 of Le Nouveau Réveil were all excessive and contrary to the standards of professional journalism, says RSF.

Ethics, code of conduct

It is acceptable for a privately-owned newspaper to support a candidate and criticise his rivals but the freedom to express opinions does not exempt journalists from the duty to respect professional ethics and codes of conduct. This means that they may under no circumstances use hateful or incendiary language or publish biased or defamatory reports, and stories liable to fuel tensions within the population must with always be handled in a careful and even-handed manner.

Reporters Without Borders has called on Le Nouveau Réveil, Notre Voie and Le Patriote to immediately change their approach to the election campaign by providing their readers with balanced and responsible reporting and thereby contributing in a positive manner to the plurality of the democratic debate in Côte d'Ivoire.

"Facing the voters" programme

Reporters Without Borders has also taken note of candidate Henri Konan Bédié's decision not to take part in "Facing the voters," a special programme that gives each candidate 90 minutes of prime time on the public radio and TV stations to present their election platform.

In a statement explaining his decision, Bédié said: "After refusing to organise debates between the candidates, the National Broadcasting Council (CNCA) is confiscating the public broadcasting space and is manoeuvring so as to favour the space given to [President Gbagbo] and his companions."

Biased radio coverage

Reporters Without Borders regrets that the CNCA did not use a lottery to determine the order in which the candidates appear in "Facing the voters." It also regrets that the CNCA has taken no measure to force the public radio and TV stations - La Première, the public broadcaster RTI's main TV channel, and Radio Côte d'Ivoire (RCI) - to respect the rules it issued, under which the 14 candidates should receive strictly equal air-time during the two-week official campaign period.

The monitoring that a Reporters Without Borders team has been conducting since 15 October shows that RCI has been systematically favouring President Gbagbo and that La Première, after several days of improvement, began on 25 October to give him much more air-time than the other candidates by means of excessive coverage of his activities as president.