Jun 8th, 2009
EU election reporting: Crafty Bulgarian media stunt
According to an AFP report on EuroBusiness, Bulgarian reporters are crafting bogus weather reports to skirt a law that bans them from releasing exit poll data from the European elections.
I love this!
In the United States, everyone always fears exit poll data from the East Coast will influence voters on the West Coast. The concern is that people in California feel defeated and less likely to vote if they see that voters around the country have overwhelmingly turned out for Candidate A instead of Candidate B.
So I’m sure EU politicians who banned the reporting of exit polling data until voting finished are worried about similar problems - especially since the elections are unfolding over June 4 - June 9.
Still, its my opinion that the media’s job is to inform the citizens. What the citizens do with that data is up to them (security issues aside).
This line from the AFP especially made me smile:
“Like the Audrey Hepburn character in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” who relays coded mafia messages to a jailed don, the BGNES news agency beat a close-of-voting 7:00 pm (1600 GMT) legal embargo with some curious temperatures.
As Bulgaria basked in temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), the agency reported that temperatures near the Sofia municipality were 25 degrees Celsius compared to 22 degrees near the Socialist Party headquarters.
In other words, the right-wing GERB party of Sofia mayor Boyko Borisov was winning a quarter of all votes, while the Socialist party of Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev was trailing.”
EUObserver has more.