Klaus Preschle's Remarks on Media and Elections

This is the week of the US Elections. Whenever we watch reports about these elections, I think all of us get excited about this kind of professionalism in doing things. It reminds us on how important campaign and communication skills are in an electoral process in order to bring home victory.

If we talk about political communications today, it is all about media. And whoever has been in doubt that this is already the case in the Philippines will not have any doubts anymore after reading the book we are going to launch today.

In our project, we decided not to tackle the role of media in elections at all, but to focus on political ads. We did that for two main reasons. First, the 2004 Elections was the first presidential election since the ban on political ads has been lifted, and only the second for the senatorial race. Secondly, we wanted to find out, up to what extent this new freedom for campaigners and politicians has changed the campaign strategies, meaning the flows of funds.

One of the results highlighted in the book is that there are indeed major changes in campaign strategies, even more relevant than I personally thought. Especially the important role of TV and the high credibility of TV might be a surprise for some of us.

We can also observe, that the campaigners already learned their lessons and maybe more important that they were able to convince politicians to do what has to be done to bring victory home. (That’s also a surprise for a European, where politicians and campaigners are very often in conflict. However, our campaigns get more charged with content and certain issues on which the parties decide).

Of course, our goal was not only to show major changes in campaigning. Especially the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, whose self-understanding lies in delivering contributions to strengthen democracy, was interested in the political consequences of these developments. What are the impacts on the goal of free and fair elections and what are the impacts on democracy at all?

There are two areas we should look at.

First area is the political arena, especially the issue of fair competition.

The book presented here is debating different kinds of regulation, which indeed are needed. I’m not sure whether there is one single country in the world which does not have any regulations regarding political advertising. I’m sure we will talk about that later on.

For now, I want to stress another point. While it is true, that campaigning is changing, we need a broad understanding in our societies of political communications. Universities and other organizations play a major role in educating experts who then can contribute as campaigners, journalists or in civil society. It does not make any sense to blame the new media world. The better way is to improve skills to guarantee the participation of all political players and a better review and monitoring.

The second area is media itself. What’s the responsibility and what is the self-understanding of media? If we talk about regulations, it might be more important to set the right incentives for media than to focus just on the politicians. The agenda of the politicians is quite clear. The whole thing is about getting elected or re-elected, what else should it be?

And media? It is a huge business as we can learn in this book. But is that already all? What about the duty of delivering basic information to everybody? What about a contribution to fair competition? It struck me, when I read the sentence that we should not make the mistake to separate the program in ads and the editorial part, because in the Philippine context not only airtime for political ads get paid. This, however, seems to be a major bias.

But, the new media world does not turn things necessarily to the worse. On the contrary, everybody can monitor what is in media. That’s already an advantage to the more invisible campaign methods.

But to turn things to the better, media has to accept their higher responsibility and the value of independent and free journalism. Some of the regulations debated in this book might be able to promote freer and fairer elections.

I hope, that we can contribute to this debate, which I think is at least of the same importance than the issue of automation of elections or electoral reforms.

I hope, that we have published a book, which will still be of interest to campaigners, journalists and citizens in preparation for the next elections.

I want to express the gratitude of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation to everybody who contributed to this project.

Thanks to Pulse Asia for generating all the data, which has never been gathered before.

Thanks to the Foundation of Communication Initiatives for coordinating the program. Thanks to Ms. Marites Vitug, the Editor of Newsbreak, who coordinated the writing.

And last but not the least, our special gratitude to the writers Ms. Glenda Gloria, Ms. Anna Maria Tabunda and Ms. Carmela Fonbuena. When I had the script for the first time in my hands, I enjoyed it like a thriller. After I started reading, I couldn’t stop anymore and I’m sure that much more people will enjoy this kind of presenting the results.

I also would like to welcome our reactors for today:

That’s enough for now. Please enjoy the launching of Spin and Sell.