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9 March 1999
MEDIA BIAS REPORTED DURING ELECTIONS
The media in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) provided diverse coverage of the parliamentary elections in October and November 1998, but ethnic or political bias was prevalent, according to monitoring done by the European Institute for the Media (EIM). In its final report, issued in January 1999 and entitled "Monitoring the media coverage of the October-November 1998 parliamentary elections in FYROM", the EIM writes, "the FYROM electronic media outlets, through their diversity, provided the electorate with a reasonably complete picture of the issues, parties and candidates in the elections." However, the EIM noticed "a general tendency" for the electronic media "to focus on parties from their own ethnic community," so that Macedonian parties received substantially more coverage from Macedonian-language media and likewise with the Albanian parties. The EIM noted a similar tendency in the print media to show bias by focussing "on parties from the ethnic community of their readers." For example, the partly state-owned newspaper "Nova Makedonija" "showed a pronounced anti-opposition slant in spite of its obligation... to report without bias." The EIM concludes, "The new government should refrain from attempting to control or influence editorial and managerial decisions in "Nova Makedonija"."
For a copy of the full EIM report, contact Ljudmila von Berg at the EIM at Kaistrasse 13, D-40332 Dusseldorf, Germany, tel: +49 211 90104 74, fax: +49 211 90104 56, e-mail: madp@eim.de, Website: http://www.eim.org.
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