Watchdog role: How Malawi media utilise question time during press briefings - Media Programme Sub-Saharan Africa
The 2019 elections in Malawi not only stirred political turmoil that led to the nullification of the presidential elections by the Constitutional Court in February 2020. It also exposed how different electoral stakeholders do their jobs. Albert Sharra, a former KAS Media Africa scholar and PhD candidate (politics) at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, followed the unfolding developments in Malawi. He paid particular attention to the conduct of the press during and after the elections. In 2018 KAS Media Africa partnered with Sharra, an award-winning journalist with over 10 years newsroom experience, to host a political communication and election reporting workshop for 30 Malawian journalists ahead of the 2019 elections.In this paper, commissioned by KAS Media Africa in April 2020, Sharra, considers how the Malawian media utilised question time during political press briefings held since April 2019.
