DECONSTRUCTION OF THE DANAS DAILY NEWSPAPER DURING THE PARLIAMENTARY PRE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN IN SERBIA 2016

Abstract

The election campaign is considered to be the best test of the degree of professionalism that the editorial policy of a media nourishes. Therefore, the content analysis of a print media coverage during the election cycle is a good indicator of the democracy level in a society because print media is not specifically regulated during the election campaign like the electronic media. For the coverage of the campaign the print media relies primarily on the Code of Journalists of Serbia (2008) and the Law on Public Information and Media (2014).

The aim of this paper is deconstruction of the editorial policy of the „Danas” daily during the election campaign for parliamentary elections in 2016. The method used is quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The corpus includes 12 issues of the „Danas” daily in April 2016 and the same number of the „Election Fever: Get Informed and vote!” appendix. The corpus makes a total of 330 texts.

Danas's coverage of the election campaign in 2016 mainly preserved professional standards both in the basic edition and in the „Election Fever: Get Informed and vote!” appendix. The editorial presented the most important lists and candidates in a balanced way, it did not deal with marginal lists and candidates. It chose important events, and reduced reporting of events that qualify as open national advertising to a minimum.

In the appendix that is dedicated to elections, the „Election Fever: Get Informed and vote!” media initiatives and new formats dominated. The editorial policy is concentrated on continuous authors’ expert comments, while daily events of the campaign and candidates have been placed in the basic issue of „Danas”.

The most present individual subject was the president of the technical government, Aleksandar Vucic. Men dominate both as subjects and as objects. The most common is the SNS party, the most frequent topic are the elections as such and procedural issues as well as economy. Comment stands out as the most common genre in a fair variety of media genres. Although „Danas” is a daily newspaper with national coverage, it remained Belgrade-centric.

In the observed corpus unambiguous violation of the journalistic code, or of the the Law on Public Information and Media (2014) were not observed. „Danas” is considered to be an independent daily that is not pro-Aleksandar Vucic-government; however, the space for political advertisement (5%) was filled with uncreative SNS and SPS advertisements. SNS occupied a whole page with a close-up photograph of the list holder just prior to the election silence.

Model of best practice would be for the self-regulatory Press Council to prescribe rules of reporting to daily newspapers and political news magazines during the election campaign to ensure a fair, balanced and equal treatment of all participants in the election cycle just like the as electronic media regulatory body (REM) has done for electronic media.