Bosnia-Herzegovina

[BA] Broadcasters in Pre-election Activities

IRIS 2006-9:1/5

Dusan Babic

Media Analyst, Sarajevo

General elections for all state levels in Bosnia and Herzegovina were held on 1 October 2006. Before the pre-election campaign had started on 1 September the Communications Regulatory Agency (CRA) remineded in writing all public and private broadcasters of their obligation to cover pre-election activities, strictly respecting the BiH Election Law and Rulebook on Media Representation of Public Subjects during the Election Period, issued by the Centralna izborna komisija (BiH Election Commission - CIK).

In covering pre-election activities broadcasters shall comply with the principles of balanced, fair and impartial reporting. Also, broadcasters are obliged to publish announcements and information issued by CIK in full and free of charge. Private broadcasters that have no informative or related programmes may submit a request to be excluded from the obligation to cover the election campaign.

Public broadcasters are obliged to provide political subjects, i.e. candidates, with equal time (3 minutes per presentation) on air for direct addressing of the public free of charge. Such obligation does not apply to private broadcasters, but if they decide to include such presentations in their programmes, they should do so in accordance with the Rulebook.

Paid political advertisements are limited to 30 minutes per political subject per week for public broadcasters, and 60 minutes for private broadcasters.

Any results of research into public opinion relating to the election shall not be published in the period of 48 hours prior to the opening, and until the closure of the polling stations.

The period of "election silence" starts 24 hours prior to the opening of the polling stations within the BiH territory and lasts until the closure of the polling stations.

Broadcasters are, generally, obliged to keep their programme recordings for 15 days after broadcasting; this time, exceptionally, they should keep it from 1 September 2006, until further notice from the CRA. In particular, broadcasters both public and private shall not allow any hate inspired or the like language in political media representations, including paid political advertising.