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By James Lamont in Kabul — August 15 2009

An authoritative media monitoring report has shown air time by Afghanistan’s state-owned television and radio channels was heavily skewed towards President Hamid Karzai in the run up to Thursday’s election.

The national public broadcaster RTA has devoted an overwhelming share of news coverage to Mr Karzai, as both president and election candidate in the past days. Other candidates have received considerably less airtime.

The research by the Media Monitoring Project Afghanistan, to be released on Sunday, will strengthen claims by rival candidates that Mr Karzai has marshalled state resources to promote his own campaign. Some say this has extended from manipulation of the media to resources, like military helicopters and police protection, to restrict them from campaigning across the country.

About 40 candidates are contesting Afghanistan’s presidential election, which is taking place under threat from a Taliban insurgency.

In a sample of news bulletins on RTA radio between 21 July to 11 August Mr Karzai received almost 92 per cent of the coverage as compared to his rivals. Abdullah Abdullah, the leading challenger and former foreign minister, received 1 per cent. Another contender Ashraf Ghani, a former finance minister and World Bank official, received only 0.5 per cent.

On state television, a similar pattern emerged. On RTA TV Kabul’s news bulletins, Mr Karzai garnered 66 per cent of the coverage compared to other presidential candidates. Mr Abdullah was in second place with 10 per cent, while Mr Ghani trailed with 3 per cent. Nearly 50 per cent of the coverage of Mr Karzai was devoted to his election ambitions rather than his duties as serving president.

Commercial stations gave a more mixed picture though some were clearly aligned with individual candidates.

Tolo TV, an independent station that staged a presidential debate between two of the leading candidates, gave 35 per cent coverage in its news bulletins to Mr Karzai, 24 per cent to Mr Abdullah and 14 per cent to Mr Ghani. Its tone, however, clearly favoured rivals to the incumbent Mr Karzai.

Noor TV, by contrast, overwhelmingly gave its news coverage to Mr Abdullah.

The MMPA also tracked paid political advertising during the campaign. It said Mr Karzai and Mr Abdullah, in particular, were targeting specific channels for their political advertisements and along with Mr Ghani were easily outspending the rest of the field.

“As the campaign enters its final days, more presidential candidates are buying more airtime on stations … Three candidates dominate the paid political ads on the radio and television stations that we analysed,” the report said.

The Abdullah campaign dominated paid airtime on Tolo TV and Lemar TV, while Mr Karzai directed political advertising towards Shamshad TV and Ariana TV

John Matisson, a media commission advisor, said that in spite of the pre-election bias in coverage the Afghan media had become more vibrant since the 2004 elections with many more new outlets being launched. He also said Afghan journalism had become much tougher and, in some cases, had embarked on several stinging investigative projects.