As the world celebrates World Radio Day today, MISA Malawi calls on radio stations to separate the truth from lies and promote peace around the 2025 general election.
In 2011, the UNESCO General Conference declared February 13 as World Radio Day and the United Nations General Assembly formally endorsed the day in 2012`.
The day is celebrated to raise greater awareness on the importance of radio. It is the day that the world celebrates radio as a powerful and low cost communication tool that reaches the widest audience across the world.
World Radio Day 2025 is being observed under the theme ‘Radio and Climate Change’, recognising the importance of radio in creating awareness on the impact of climate change.
This year, MISA Malawi takes the day as an opportunity to remind radio stations and personalities of their role in ensuring that the information on upcoming election is accurate and credible for a well informed electorate.
Radio stations should always have gatekeeping mechanisms that separate the truth or facts from lies and guard against the infiltration of some individual or political interests in their programming.
We call on radio stations to avoid being used as propaganda or voter manipulation tools as that has the potential to erode the much needed trust in the media. In the end, loss of trust in the media impacts media freedom.
MISA Malawi urges radio stations to put fact checking mechanisms in place and protect voters from any form of campaign or election-related lies.
With about 75 national, regional and community radio stations licenced by Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA), radio continues to hold the largest share in Malawi’s information ecosystem. Voters trust and rely on radio stations to get verified and credible information on election and such reliable sources of information must always strive to be professional.
Election is an emotive process and some politicians and their supporters might use political podia and other platforms including radio to promote hate speech and violence. Radio stations must strive to provide information that is free from hate speech. Radio stations should always use the language that promotes peaceful coexistence among people of different political inclinations.
We wish all radio personalities, radio stations and radio listener a happy World Radio Day.
