Campaign Coverage Satisfies Media Regulator

Media professionals in the country have been commended for their “good behavior” in the first week of the two-week presidential campaign which began on Saturday September 22. Peter Essoka, President of the National Communication Council said journalists have so far shown professionalism in their coverage, despite some lapses. He was speaking at the NCC head office in Yaounde, Monday October 1, during a press briefing to present the count of airtime and space allocated by private and public media organs to the presidential hopefuls.

Going by statistics generated by NCC technical services, between September 22 and September 29, the audio visual media sample, 12, retained for monitoring allowed 2,428 people to speak on the presidential poll. Of that number, 2,050 were men while 378 were women. English language accounted 22 per cent while French hit 78 per cent.

It is based on the statistics which the boss of the media regulatory agency said the coverage has so far been satisfactory. However, Essoka called on journalists to correct a few shortcomings, notably the respect for the principles of equality, pluralism, transparency and balance in the coverage of the campaigns of the nine presidential candidates. “The success of the democratic process in our country calls for the responsibility of each and everyone of us,” Essoka said.

For the monitoring, the NCC selected CRTV Television, CRTV Radio, Cameroon Tribune, Radio Tiemeni Si...