Managing Election- Relation Violence for Democratic Stability in Ghana Two theoretical constructs provide a framework for a more fruitful exploration and illustration of the concern about the relationship between the output of the Ghanaian media and the outlook of the Ghanaian democracy:'media malaise' and'political efficacy'. Media Malaise In return for the liberties that the media(are supposed to) enjoy, the media under a democracy are(supposed to be) guided by a common set of principles and instrumental conventions – a professional code of ethics. The media malaise proposition suggests that the media are not always able or willing to do this. Rather, the normative tendency is to pursue scandal and sensation. As the newsroom maxim goes, if it bleeds, it leads 7 . 7 Newton(1999: 577) expressed it quite succinctly(even if somewhat cynically) when he noted that,'If there is little conflict, the media will exaggerate what exists, or try to create it'. This evokes the mirror metaphor. In their coverage of routine issues and events, the political media can act as the reflective mirror with which the public may evaluate the promises and claims of parties and candidates. On the other hand, since some mirrors can also distort, the media can pervert, and even subvert, the rights of the electorate to legitimate representation by resorting to distortion and disinformation. Since multiparty political contests are inherently adversarial, the more likely prospect is usually for the media to blur their'journalistic values to the point where fact and fiction are indistinguishable within politics itself'(Livingstone and Markham, 2008, p. 355). The implication in the Ghanaian case is that the 1992 Constitution's guarantees of freedom per se will not always 77 Anne Nelson first used the expression in a 1994 article in Index on Censorship in which she expressed the concern that the news media's growing tendency towards sensationalism was pre-empting quality content. 215