"Despite years of stock taking, donors to media development still have a number of blind spots that prevent their interventions from being more effective. In particular, media development stakeholders could improve their efforts by applying aid effectiveness principles to their practice. When examining media development assistance over the last two decades, certain patterns become clear. The consensus among media development practitioners is that media development supports all other development, both economic development and good governance, directly and indirectly. At the same time, donors often use media to promote stability, democracy, and development. Donors to media development rarely articulate a precise theory of change at the outset of their interventions. Generally, however, modernization theory–the idea that Western-style, top-down mass media would transform developing societies into “modern” nations along the same path as their Western counterparts–seems to be still unconsciously driving much of contemporary practice even though the theory itself has been long discredited." (Executive summary)