prijava
SARAJEVO, November 3 (FEN) - In the first two weeks of the election campaign for the local elections, political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina spent 862,554 KM on advertising in the media.
The data refer only to the lease of space on TV and in the print media. We should add 136,300 KM to that amount, which is the market value of the production of videos and advertisements that were broadcast in that period, which totals at almost one million KM.
The data were collected through the monitoring of media content, which was conducted by the media monitoring agency for the needs of Transparency International in BiH (TI BIH).
More than 63 percent of that amount was spent in the second week of the election campaign, and the number of ads aired increased as election day approached.
It is interesting that, out of the observed 15 largest political parties in BiH, almost the entire amount was spent by six parties. The largest part of the costs for the production and broadcasting of advertisements was with the SNSD (351,357) and the PDP (325,852 KM), and it is about the estimated market value of broadcasting advertisements and video production.
The data include only advertising on television and in the print media, i.e., the twelve TV stations and 34 print media outlets from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina. Amounts spent on other forms of advertising are currently unavailable.
"The collected data will be compared with the reports from political parties, in order to determine how much the parties show the actual amounts of income they have at their disposal," it is stated.
In the first two weeks of the election campaign, 1,982 appearances of public officials were recorded on the three public broadcasting services, and their content indicated the promotion of their political and party views.
The largest number of such appearances of officials (1,369) was recorded on RTRS, 371 on BHRT and 242 on FTV.
"Although the Election Law prescribes that no political entity should have a privileged position in electronic media broadcasts, as well as officials at all levels of government who are candidates in the elections, in practice quite the opposite happens," pointed out the TI BiH.
In two weeks, out of 1,369 such appearances on RTRS, as many as 1,080 referred to the appearances of public officials from the SNSD, and more than 77 hours of the program were dedicated to their views and positions.
"Significantly more space than to the others was given to the member of the Presidency of BiH Milorad Dodik (192 appearances, 10 hours of the program) and the mayor of Banja Luka Igor Radojičić. He is again a candidate for the mayor position, and in two weeks he appeared 108 times on RTRS, which includes a total of 7.6 hours of the program of that public broadcaster.
After the officials from the SNSD, the most space on RTRS was given to the officials from the Ujedinjena Srpska, who appeared 65 times, then the SDA (55), DEMOS (39), DNS (27) SDS (34), SPS (10) ), PDP (8).
Since the beginning of the campaign, the most space on BHRT has been given to holders of public positions from the SNSD, who have appeared 130 times, with 5.6 hours of the program being dedicated to them.
The SDA officials had 94 appearances (3.9 hours of the program). Behind them are officials from the SBB, who appeared in the program of that public broadcaster 28 times.
"Monitoring the appearance of office holders on public RTV services is part of the overall monitoring of TI BiH, which refers to the abuse of public functions and public resources in the election campaign, which certainly includes public RTV services," stated TI BiH.
All appearances and mentions of officials in informative and debate shows and other announcements that indicated the space for the promotion of their political and party positions have been registered.
"Apart from the editorial policy of public media outlets, the abuse of public functions for election promotion contributed for the most part to the number of appearances of certain holders of official positions because numerous officials intensified their activities and appearances in the election campaign, and most often have used their functions and space in the media to promote their political parties," stated TI BiH.
(FENA) S. R.
