Imbert tells media to step up election result reporting

PEOPLE’S National Movement (PNM) chairman Colm Imbert urged the broadcast media to improve their coverage of results on election night.

He spoke at a briefing at Balisier House, Port of Spain, on Thursday.

Imbert said at no time on election night last Monday had the UNC ever been ahead, although television coverage had suggested otherwise.

“That whole story about them being ahead was simply untrue. They knew they were behind. There’s no way at any time on Monday night – whether its 6 pm, 7 pm, 8 pm, or 9 pm, 10 pm or 11 pm – that the UNC was ahead.”

Imbert recalled a television station wrongly calling the result for his Diego Martin North East constituency in the 2010 election.

“In 2010 when the TV (station) was calling my seat for the UNC and I had gone home to change and came back to my office and saw everybody crying.

"I said ‘What are you crying for?’

"One said. ‘Mr Imbert you’ve lost your seat.’

"I said. ‘No, I’ve been tallying the results and I’ve won.'

“But the TV was saying that I had lost my seat.”

Likewise, Imbert said last Monday at one point he was at 9,000 votes, compared to 2,000 votes for his nearest rival, as he had calculated by tallying statement of the poll (form 69) documents for that constituency, signed by Election and Boundaries Commission (EBC) staff and each candidate’s polling agents.

“But the TV had me 3,000 and him (his opponent) at 2,000. So I’m just saying, you all have got to do better,

"But I'm not getting into that.”

Saying he had run in nine elections, Imbert compared the conduct of past elections with now.

“Long ago, and I would ask you to ask your bosses, I’d see a reporter at my constituency on election night. I knew that long ago, each main media house would send someone to the main constituency office of every single one of the candidates, whatever it was, 36 or 41, (to) get the results live and direct.”

He said from 1991, for the first three or four elections he had contested the reporting was accurate.

“But something has gone wrong in the last ten years, and the media no longer does that.

“I’m just urging you to urge your bosses to reinstate that policy so at least on election night the results would be fairly accurate.”

He wondered if social media was now causing bad election-night coverage.