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The media challenge
The Municipality of Mistivca is in south central Macedonia and includes 10 villages and one small town of 30,000 people, Belugovo. The Mayor of the Municipality is from the Liberal Progressive Party, which is also the party currently in control of the national government. The municipal council is also dominated by this party, but only by a slim majority. Recently the municipality began building a new sports complex on the outskirts of town in order to stimulate commerce by attracting large sports and entertainment events. The town until now has suffered economically with the closing down of several large industries and unemployment is high. The Mayor and the municipal council are investing in the sports center as a way to help improve the economic situation because the area is known for its clean air and good climate, appropriate for sports, and there is a large tract of land that formerly was used by one of the large industries for storage and is now just an eyesore in the town.
Clearing of the site and construction began one month ago and two separate firms were hired to do the work, one for the clearing and another for the construction. Now, a month after the work began, the local media in Belugovo, which include one local television station, two radio stations and a small newspaper that comes out every two weeks, have started to carry stories accusing the municipality of corruption in the selection of the two companies working on the sports center. Both the Mayor and the municipal council have been implicated.
The response to the challenge
Objective
The municipal government’s objective is to demonstrate to the public that there was not corruption in the tendering process and win back the confidence of the voters in Belugovo.
Target
The target audience that the municipal leaders need to reach in their reaction to the crisis is the adult population of Belugovo and the surrounding area. This means it is a primarily rural population that is approximately 70 percent Macedonian and 25 percent Albanian with the remainder made up mostly of Roma and Turkish residents.
Message
The process through which the firms were selected was fair and transparent as are all other decisions made by the municipal government.
Tools
The municipality chose a few key tools to communicate their message to the public using the media at their disposal.
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Press tour: |
Immediately after the stories began to appear the municipality |
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invited journalist from all the local media to visit the municipality and the building site. The tour included: 1) an interview with the Mayor, 2) a visit to the financial department in the municipality, during which the person in charge of public procurement explained the procedures and showed the press the documentation for the sports center procurement, and 3) a visit to the building site to meet the representatives from the two firms and inspect the ongoing work.
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Interviews: |
The mayor and members of the municipal council did not refuse |
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| interviews
during this period, and made appearances on the television station and gave live interviews on the radio. Because the charges had been made against them as a whole they made every attempt to appear together during interviews. This did not mean all at once, but instead if the mayor gave an interview he would do it jointly with a council member from a different party and the council members made every attempt to appear in pairs. This way they could avoid party divisions that would deepen suspicions and widen divisions within the government. |
Analysis of the response
What was their challenge?
Accusations and scandal are popular with journalists and audience, but it is more difficult to get people to pay attention to the lack of scandal or a story when something is actually done right. The municipality had to do something above and beyond a normal press conference or press release to get the media to really concentrate on the story and message that the municipality wanted to communicate.
What did they do right?
It was a good tactic to react immediately to the crisis in an open way. Because the issue was transparency, it was good that they did not shut their doors and avoid giving comments. The idea to invite the press to see the financial documentation is a good one for proving transparency because it is not just demonstrating that that particular instance was free of corruption, but also that the municipality is interested in being transparent in general.
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Think about what you would have done if you were the Mayor or a member of the council. |
What else could they have done?
They could also have decided to hold a town hall meeting and invite the general public and the media. This would have taken some preparation, but would also have given the Mayor and council members a chance to come in to direct contact with their target audience. Another idea could have been to write a column or letter from the municipality for publishing in the local newspaper. However because the newspaper does not come out very often this would only have been useful if the paper was coming out soon, since this issue was urgent.
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