New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal has won the battle for highest coverage in television news this election season while BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi secured a second position and Congress’ Rahul Gandhi a distant third.
A survey conducted by Centre for Media Studies (CMS)— from March 1 to 15 of Aaj Tak, ABP News, Zee News, NDTV 24x7 and CNN IBN — has revealed that election coverage on TV news reflects the main fight was between BJP and AAP. “Party wise and leader wise analysis asserts that Congress is in oblivion,” the survey stated.
“The coverage also demolished popular myth of the 2014 elections that media is Modi and Modi is media, as Arvind Kejriwal toppled Narendra Modi in television news coverage by generating 28 per cent while Modi got around 24 per cent. However, the coverage of Kejriwal is more negative than Modi,” a statement issued by the CMS stated.
“Surprisingly Rahul Gandhi, despite being campaign committee chief of the Congress in this election, got only 4.76 per cent of the coverage given to the political leaders,” the CMS Media Lab Analysis concluded.
With more than 50 per cent of the air time being grabbed by the top two contenders, regional leaders Lalu Yadav (3 per cent), Raj Thackeray, Nitish Kumar, Mamata Bannerjee, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav complete the top ten list with most of them securing 2-1.5 per cent of coverage time.
AAP also grabbed the first position in election coverage of television news by acquiring 33.52 per cent of total coverage while BJP secured 31.37 per cent of coverage.
The survey revealed that the top issues and subjects being discussed were personality (22.62) and party (16.37) were the major focus of the 2014 election coverage in television news. Interestingly, Hindutva (16.37) was also one of the major issues in the coverage.
Campaign against corruption and vote for development were the issues among the top five issues of election coverage, the survey revealed.
