From a distant in the chambers of the Ancient Marriner, one could hear stacked-voices of Ghanaian state-owned media’s journalists piercing through a political party-painted-ships with political news! political news! political news! everywhere on the political-oceans yet there is none to cover? On the contrary, political parties continue to accuse state-owned media for lack of equity in the coverage of political parties during elections.
The 1992 Ghanaian constitution enjoins the state-owned media to extend equal and fair coverage to all political parties as ascribed in Article 55 (11) and Article (12). In spite of these constitutional provisions, there has been a debate on unfair treatment of opposing political parties by the incumbent political party as generally termed as incumbent abuses. What then is political incumbent abuse? Incumbent abuse is when a ruling government takes advantage of government power and resources which are not available to its opponents in securing advantages such as extensive media coverage frequency than its challengers’ (https://sundominica.com). It has been observed that ‘exploitation of political office to secure electoral advantage is widespread in Africa’ (https://issafrica.org) as ‘African leaders exploit government resources for political advantage’ (https://issafrica.org) in campaigns activity media coverage. The Ghanaian political party landscapes have equally experienced such political party incumbent abuses to some extent as noted in a report on Ghana’s 2016 political party elections by the European Union Election Observation Mission (EUEOM) which observed that ‘incumbency abuse was a recurring problem in Ghanaian elections with unleveled playing field’ (https://mobile.peacefmonline.com).
A fair and equitable media coverage of all political parties during general elections of both presidential and parliamentary by the state- owned media is a critical factor in ensuring peaceful and a healthy democratic processes in any political dispensations such as Ghana’s electoral spaces. It is against such needful equitable news coverage of Ghanaian political parties during general elections is this study constructed. The primary objective of this study is therefore to ascertain the trend in incumbency abuses during the following elections’ year in Ghana from the 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, (2024 – the sampled newspapers are from January to June). This study employed news content analysis approach of two- constructed week sampling, intercoder reliability reported at 85% validity and is limited to the Ghanaian State-Owned Print Media comprising Daily Graphic, and Ghanaian Times with a focus on the political pages. The study units for this study were the political parties, political news pages, political parties, independent presidential candidates. Multiple or double coding were allowed for an equitable data extraction.
During the study, the following political parties remained most visible: National Patriotic Party (NPP), National Democratic Congress (NDC) and Convention Peoples Party (CPP). In an analysis of the aforementioned election years, the following results were identified: The results shows that the political party in power enjoyed the highest media attention as depicted in the charts below. The conflicting point is, does the highest attention accorded to a an incumbent necessary connotes a political incumbency abuse? This contention needs further probing by taking into account the media relations strategy deployed by political parties during election years:
Media Relations as a Needful Political Strategy
The data below in Fig. A – Fig. C calls on political parties to strengthen and their media relations strategy by building effective relations with the media, deploy strategies in pitching political party activity stories, engage the media professionally even when there is nothing to publish. In addition, Ghanaian political parties should not over rely on the 1992 Constitutional provision under Article 55 (11) and Article 55 (12) but to deploy a tactful media engagement plan, efforts and initiatives that draws the media to a news value as state-owned media journalists are shouting from the Ancient Marriner – political news! political news!
political news! everywhere on the political-oceans yet there is none to cover? Political parties may also develop an internal media and narrative monitoring strategy within its media relations plan in order to evaluate the influence and impact of the 1992 constitution on state-
owned print media and other related outlets on the election’s coverage. This study admits a sense of disparity in coverage of political parties. However, does not subscribe totally to political incumbency abuse assumptions based on high media coverage of the incumbent’s political party during elections as the trend revealed from 1992 through to 2024. Although, the charts reveal a trend of high coverage for the incumbents during election year, it shouldn’t be blatantly be treated as political abuses but should be situated in the context of political party’s media relations strategy and also a further data set of political party activities should be juxtaposed with media coverage of activity dates and corresponding coverage. This study is therefore limited by such data sets of correlation between political party’s activities and extent of coverages. Future studies could consider such a second correlation data sets for a comprehensive analysis.
Notwithstanding the limitations, these charts is intended to contribute to conversations around state-owned media coverage of political parties and the promotion of peaceful electoral processes and sustainability of democracy in Ghana and Africa.
FIG.A
FIG.B
FIG.C
About The Author:
Messan Mawugbe(PhD)
Email: mawugbe@ibnareports.org