The Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ), Writers' Alliance for Media Independence (WAMI) and Charter 2000- Aliran have come together to launch an initiative to monitor the media's coverage of the 12th General Election campaign. They will be assisted by independent volunteers.

As with a similar initiative in the previous general election, we will keep track of the election news coverage and critically examine whether the media, both print and electronic, have been ethical in their reporting.

As a citizens of this country, Malaysians have every right to demand fair media coverage so that voters can make informed choices when casting their ballots. It is thus crucial that we investigate whether each of the contesting political parties receives a fair hearing in the mass media.

The media coverage should be fair, professional, unbiased and ethical. What this means is that there must be:

• equal access to the mainstream media for all parties
• fair and sufficient coverage for all parties
• the right to reply or to respond to state a position or to clarify baseless allegations

Apart from examining news reports, we will also study editorials, features and political adcertisements to ascertain if they are fair.Our observations and analyses will be posted on the Election 2008 Media Monitors' Diary at www.aliran.com/election We encourage Malaysians and civil society groups to incorporate RSS feed of this dairy into their blogs, websites, browsers and aggregate news readers. The URL for the feed is www.aliran.comm/election/atom.xml

This voluntary effort by Malaysians for which no funding has been received from any source.

Issued by,

Gayathry Venkiteswaran, Wong Chin Huat, and Dr Mustafa K. Anuar, Anil Netto for Centre for Independent Journalism, Writers Alliance for Media Independence, and Charter 2000- Aliran respectively.