By CHITALU MUMBA and EPHESTUS SIAZYU –
THE Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) has called on the electronic media to provide fair coverage of political parties during next year’s general elections.
IBA board member Hilda Akakelwa urged media houses to cover political parties fairly and without bias.
“I am aware that some political parties are struggling and cannot afford to pay for airtime on radio or television, but my appeal to media houses is to offer every party a platform to showcase themselves,” she said.
Ms Akekelwa said in an interview yesterday that it was also important for radio stations to ensure that complaints by listeners were resolved in the shortest possible time.
She called on radio listeners to raise complaints where necessary so that professionalism could be upheld.
Another IBA board member, Overton Banda said some radio listeners did not know their rights and did not raise complaints over the standard of information given to them by radio stations.
“Some radio listeners don’t know their rights and they also don’t know where to take their complaints. This is the reason we are familiarising ourselves on the operations of various stations,” he said.
He said it was the right of the IBA to take action if electronic media houses were not able to respond and deal with complaints raised by listeners and viewers.
“I am appealing to radio station owners to be responsible for whatever complaints are raised by the listeners or viewers in case of TV. It is their obligation to sort out effectively their failure lest we take action as IBA,” he said.
The two IBA members on Monday toured three radio stations in Livingstone, namely Falls FM, Zambezi FM and Mosi-o-Tunya.