Covering Elections: The Challenges of Training the Watchdogs

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of journalists is different from that of monitors, they both need to be concerned with such issues as suffrage, security of ballots, prevention of corruption, and freedom of opinion. Oddly, the failure to connect the two sides stems, at least partly, from the fact that both election monitors and major donors in the field of free elections consider journalism on the periphery of their missions.

CIMA Research Report: Covering Elections

8. Incorporate new technology into election coverage training. This is a rich and neglected area, in part because the use of SMS, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, cellphones, and other technologies in campaign coverage is evolving and in part because there is so little coordination about what to teach. This is one area where colleagues in the developed and the developing world ought to be collaborating. As recent upheavals over political corruption in North Africa and the Middle East showed conclusively, young people are using these tools already.

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Center for International Media Assistance


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