"Independent media institutions are crucial for genuine democracies. The most important institutions are national and regional public service media and regulatory bodies that are responsible for the allocation of frequencies and licenses to private media, media market regulation, and protection of m ... edia independence. For this reason, it is essential to ensure the political and economic independence of public service media and of new regulatory bodies for the audio-visual sector. A key factor is the composition and function of the governing bodies and the procedures for the selection of chairpersons and general directors. In a worst-case scenario, the government is mandated to appoint members of the boards of regulatory bodies and the public service media. This jeopardises media independence and limits media’s ability to hold the government accountable towards the public. It is slightly better when members of the Parliament choose the members of these ruling bodies, because opposition parties at least will have a minority influence in the decisions. However, this type of procedure makes independent regulatory bodies and public service media accountable to political parties rather than to the public. A third procedure for choosing members to the governing bodies is used in the Western Balkans. As part of their decade-long preparation for membership of the European Union and their compliance with EU standards, the six potential candidates in Western Balkan have implemented improved media legislation and regulatory measures with regards to the ele ction of board members for public service media and regulatory bodies. The measures to protect the political independence of these institutions constitute a promising step forward but do not fully prevent undesirable politicisation. Characteristically, the potential Western Balkan EU-members (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia) explicitly define what public or civil society organisations are eligible as nominators of candidates for the governing body. In most cases, a parliamentary committee invites these nominating organisations to nominate candidates. In one country, the nominating organisations may propose four times as many candidates as the number of available seats in the governing body, whereas only the required number of candidates are nominated in other places." (Page 1) more

"This report provides a useful basis to understand the broad nature of media freedom, and gauge the Status of media freedom and development from a legal, policy and professional perspective. Being the first of its kind to be produced by RMC, we attach special value to this product because it sets th ... e standards for future publications. Our plan is to produce an annual analysis of the media sector in Rwanda to provide a point of reference on media issues as well as an alternative assessment of media freedom in Rwanda. As you will notice, this report adopts the UNESCO methodology of assessing media freedom, which isa broad understanding ofthe multi-dimensional nature of media freedom. We chose this methodology because it was more comprehensive than other available methodologies and most reports about medla freedom in Rwanda so far have focused primarily on the political aspects of medla freedom. Yet, as this reports indicates, there are other important aspects, such as the professional, the educational, the infrastructural, and even the economic aspects that in the final analysis have an impact on the nature of media freedom." (Preface) more