"For two years running, Pakistan has been ranked by international media monitors as the most dangerous place on earth for journalists. Media workers have been kidnapped, tortured, and beaten to death for delving into the nation’s potent military apparatus and spy agencies. Bodies have been found w
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ith throats slit and flesh punctured with electric drills by Islamic militants, political extremists, and gangsters who take umbrage at what they write." (Abstract)
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Examining Uganda’s increasingly fractured media landscape, this report finds that the media is vulnerable to government intimidation and self-censorship.
"The exponential media growth in Afghanistan over the last decade is due to the enthusiasm of Afghan entrepreneurs and to support from the United States and other nations, states this report. According to the executive summary "support from the United States, the biggest donor, has waxed and waned.
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From 2002 to 2005 USAID spend $23 million to launch news media outlets and train journalists, and from 2006 to 2010 funding totaled $20.64 million. That included a couple of lean years, 2007 and 2008, when spending was only $3.3 million each year. But with the Obama administration’s Afghan military surge of 2009 there also came a media spending surge. USAID funded a $22 million project called the Afghanistan Media Development and Empowerment Project (AMDEP) for 2011, and a separate $7 million project to put news on cellphones was put to bid. Meanwhile, $183 million was allocated to the U.S. embassy in Kabul for a wide array of media projects in 2010 and 2011. And the Defense Department budgeted $180 million for information operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2011 alone, some portion of which went to support Afghan media. The effectiveness of all this spending is difficult to gauge, but the smaller and more focused projects–such as creating new radio stations–tend to be seen as generally successful, while the value of the larger and broader projects–such as an anti-insurgency message campaign–is harder to judge." (Executive summary, page 4-5)
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"Le rapport sur la radiodiffusion publique au Cameroun observe que le pays a fait ses preuves en matière de libéralisation des médias depuis l'aube du millénaire, mais qu'en dépit de ses plus de 80 stations de radio et de ses cinq chaînes de télévision nationales, des problèmes subsistent.
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Le bilan du Cameroun en matière de respect de la liberté de la presse doit être amélioré. Le rapport affirme également que les cadres réglementaires stricts actuellement en place n'encouragent pas un environnement médiatique dynamique et sont loin de respecter les normes et les engagements continentaux auxquels le gouvernement est partie. Le rapport appelle à des réformes urgentes des médias et de la législation, conformément à la Constitution qui, sur le papier, garantit la liberté d'expression et de la presse, mais qui, dans la pratique, contredit ces droits. Le rapport exhorte les décideurs politiques et les législateurs à abroger et à remplacer des lois telles que la loi sur la liberté des communications de masse afin de garantir la liberté d'expression et de la presse, alignant ainsi les politiques médiatiques du Cameroun sur les instruments continentaux tels que la Déclaration de principes sur la liberté d'expression en Afrique". (www.afrimap.org)
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"A dual journal project was launched in 2010 to build bridges between French and English media research spheres through the translation and reciprocal publication of a series of essays from each linguistic sphere. In 2012, a special issue of Afrique contemporaine (‘Les Afriques médiatiques’) wa
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s published, with six essays in French by authors working on media from the English-language zone. The present issue of Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies, volume 33 issue 3, makes articles originating from French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa available to English-speaking readers in translated form. This introduction sketches the background to the project." (Abstract)
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"The report on public broadcasting in Cameroon, observes that the country although has a strong track record of media liberalization since the dawn of the millennium, but despite its more than 80 radio and five national television stations challenges remain. Cameroon’s record of upholding press fr
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eedom needs to be improved. It also argues that stringent regulatory frameworks currently in place do not encourage a vibrant media environment and falls far short of continental standards and commitments, to which the government is a party to. The report calls for urgent media and legislative reforms that conform to its Constitution, which on paper guarantees the freedom of expression and press, but in practice contradicts such rights. The report urges policy and law makers to repeal and replace such laws as the Freedom of Mass Communications law so as to guarantee freedom of expression and press, thus aligning Cameroon’s media polices with continental instruments such as the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa." (www.afrimap.org)
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"The study did not aim to carry out new surveys or collect information that was not already publicly available. Since the toolkit is aimed at providing media development organizations with a tool to assess media landscapes without having to carry out extensive new research, the Ghana study worked on
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ly with materials, surveys, and other information available at the time of writing. In testing the toolkit in Ghana, the study found that the indicators selected and the methodology based on collecting direct information and materials already available is a useful approach to create a comprehensive media landscape assessment. It allowed us to provide an overview of the situation in which media in Ghana operate and to identify areas for future media development programs." (Methodology, page 3)
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"This article addresses the emerging patterns of contemporary media-based engagements between China and Africa and argues, after an examination of current media systems in both China and Africa, that, despite expressed worries to the contrary, because of reasons spanning from history to geo-politics
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, the Chinese model of media system as it currently stands does not stand a chance, at least in the foreseeable future, to be exported to Africa – a continent whose current media landscape is, and will arguably remain, significantly Western-oriented. The article concludes with a call for scholars to exercise analytical restraint in their examination of the potential impacts of recent China–Africa media relations." (Abstract)
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"At the request of the Norwegian, Swedish and subsequently Danish Embassies in Bangkok, International Media Support (IMS) conducted an assessment of the current media environment inside Myanmar during two missions between July and November 2011. The assessment was motivated by a democratic reform pr
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ocess initiated in March 2011 when the 50-year reign of the military was replaced by a civilian government. A number of small steps taken so far by the Myanmar government in relation to media have provided an opening to expand the country’s freedom of expression space. The objective of the assessment was thus to identify opportunities and provide a set of recommendations for potential international interventions on media development within the country for the short and long-term perspective." (Executive summary)
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"In March 2005, a relatively nonviolent uprising ousted an authoritarian president in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. In the aftermath of the so-called Tulip Revolution, press rights advocates and journalists welcomed the promise of greatly enhanced freedoms. However, the new regime proved
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to be as authoritarian and corrupt as its predecessor and little liberalization of the press system was evident five years later. Physical assaults continued, including murders, as did harassment, libel suits, impediments to access to information, license denials and self-censorship. There was only slow movement toward privatizing of state-owned media. Independent and oppositional media also remained in financial peril due to the country’s weak economy and high poverty level. Thus, 20 years after independence and a half-decade after the Tulip Revolution, the Soviet propaganda model for a press system was dead in name, but many major attributes survived, with significant implications for the continuum of authoritarianism in other postcommunist nations. The degree to which the April 2010 coup and subsequent constitutional change to a parliamentary democracy will spur an expansion of press rights and sustain market-based independent media outlets remains speculative amid grave concerns about continuing anti-press events." (Abstract)
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"This article sets out to map the journalistic field as a space of struggle between distinct professional milieus. These milieus crystallize around journalists who share similar views on journalism’s function in society. By means of cluster analysis, four global professional milieus were extracted
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from the survey responses of 1800 journalists in 18 countries: the populist disseminator, detached watchdog, critical change agent and the opportunist facilitator. The detached watchdog milieu clearly dominates the journalistic field in most western countries, while the milieu of the opportunist facilitator reigns supreme in several developing, transitional and authoritarian contexts. In accordance with the theoretical propositions, relatively little professional autonomy was found in contexts with rather strong corporate and commercial influences. However, a more universal approach would need to go beyond corporate and commercial factors in order to account for the realities of the journalistic field in non-western countries." (Abstract)
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"This report investigates the relationships between media freedoms, financial sustainability of media in emerging markets, and international media support. It is based on a survey of more than 220 newspapers and media executives in more than sixty countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas,
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and on five in-depth country studies: Egypt, Georgia, Guatemala, Mozambique and Vietnam. Research results indicate that media executives see the greatest opportunities in three principle areas: investing in new technology and multimedia operations; developing journalists’ skills; and enhancing the skills of staff in commercial departments to improve revenue and efficiency." (Publisher description)
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