National News

MBC favouring PP—Macra

The ruling Peoples Party (PP) continues to enjoy massive coverage on the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) amid calls from various stakeholders that the public broadcasters should open up and give equal coverage to opposition parties.

According to a media monitoring report issued by the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra), between April 27 and May 3, out of 1660.5 minutes allotted to political airtime by MBC television, 1166.5 minutes went to PP while the remaining 494 minutes was shared among the remaining opposition parties contesting in the May 20 Tripartite Elections.

PP supporters at a recent rally
PP supporters at a recent rally

Meanwhile, the report shows that broadcasters have increased their political airtime compared to the monitoring which was conducted between March 30 and April 5.

However, the public broadcasters increased political airtime to the opposition parties of UDF, DPP and MCP as well as National Salvation Army (Nasaf) and New Labour Party (NLP) which had no coverage in the previous monitoring.

During the previous report, DPP got 10.2 minutes from MBC television but in the recent monitoring it got 70.2 minutes; the television station gave UDF 9.2 minutes in the previous report and 45 minutes this time around while MCP got 38.9 minutes and 3.4 minutes earlier on.

From all the broadcasting mediums monitored, Aford got no coverage during the monitored week and Galaxy FM gave DPP 1667.3 minutes of political airtime from its total of 2014 minutes.

Related Articles

Back to top button