State-owned TVK pulled a 10-minute election news segment Saturday night because of its editorial content and technical problems before airing it on Sunday night, an official said.
The segment, produced through a UN Development Program project that teams TVK reporters with foreign media experts, was the first broadcast news about the run-up to the July 27 general elections.
The segment—packed with interviews, snappy camera angles and a graphic—featured stories about media coverage of the elections and last week’s visit by US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
It also included a clip of a Sam Rainsy Party official criticizing TVK and an interview with an election-monitoring NGO.
TVK and the UNDP staff decided to shelve the Saturday segment shortly before it was to air during the regular 7 pm program, said Daphne Skillen, a UNDP media adviser to the National Election Committee.
“We discussed one small clip because it was incorrect. It was not about censorship…. There were some issues about clips where there was wrong information,” Skillen said.
One problematic clip, Skillen said, showed a woman saying that there had been no information available about voter registration. That clip did not air in the Sunday broadcast.
“If the person had expressed themselves properly, then we would have used” the clip, Skillen said. She said journalists, editors and the foreign advisers should have cut those portions of the segment.
TVK General Director Mau Ayuth said the news was pulled Saturday because of technical problems. TVK has maintained final editing authority on the station’s programming.
Media experts working in the UNDP project, which promised balanced, issues-oriented news, said it remains unclear if it can achieve its mission.
“We’re prepared to be patient, up to a point,” said Ian Porter of the Canada-based NGO Impacs, which is coaching TVK journalists through the election coverage.
Porter, speaking Saturday afternoon by phone from Battambang, said he was “disappointed” when a program about pottery appeared on TVK Saturday night instead of the election news coverage.
“What happens in the next few days is very important, as far as the credibility of the project,” Porter said.
The UNDP has stressed that its top priority is adherence to the “equity broadcast,” which allocates predetermined percentages of air times to the 23 competing political parties, and that editorial content is of secondary importance.
Television stations, including TVK, drew criticism earlier this month when they aired a CPP-produced program blaming Funcinpec for igniting factional fighting in 1997.
