"The main finding of this study is that the Kenyan media have been operating in an unpredictable and swiftly changing political, social, cultural, economic and technological environment that has heavily influenced its development. A hostile and inadequate political, legal, policy and regulatory envi
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ronment continues to negatively impact on the media in Kenya. Unsophisticated liberalization of telecommunications since 1998 led to slow, uneven and haphazard growth in broadcasting." (Executive summary)
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"What emerges from the discussion of the Southern African media councils is a picture of relatively new institutions, struggling to find their place in a changing, difficult media and political terrain. They share many common challenges, as they contend with hostile governments, poor journalistic pr
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actices and a lack of resources. And yet there are significant differences between them. The strongest councils are undoubtedly those of Tanzania and South Africa. The Media Council of Tanzania (MCT) is far and away the biggest, with a large number of staff involved in a wide range of projects. Besides adjudicating complaints against the media, it is actively involved in lobbying on media freedom issues, even having drafted alternative laws to put to government. It has a substantial publication programme, has developed regional Press Clubs and offered training. Its ethics committee seems to be well established and generally respected, as indicated by the fact that several very prominent people have used it. Respect among the media is high: although there have been some cases of rulings being ignored, these are exceptions. The media provide the council’s core funding, while an extensive additional programme of activities is funded by donors. In general, the MCT is an excellent example of how a body of this kind can work. The South African council is by far the busiest, even though it has a much smaller staff. It has chose to concentrate almost entirely on the adjudication function. Only recently has it added the defence of media freedoms to its aims, but it is still developing a sense of what this might mean in concrete terms. One of the factors restraining the council from leaping too quickly into this arena is the fact that South Africa has several other media groups, which are already active in the area. Sensibly, there is little appetite on the council for duplicating work that the SA National Editors Forum (Sanef), the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI), Misa and others are already doing." (Conclusion)
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"This book can only give an overview on practiced media ethics by making available memorable experiences of broadcasters in their daily work. Furthermore it provides an exchange of different views and ideas of broadcasters and offers useful links and further suggestions to get a closer look into how
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other broadcasting organisations set their Code of Ethics. The final intention of this publication is to inspire the broadcasters thinking on the necessity of a code of conduct for core journalistic values and ethical practices and encourages broadcasting organisations to develop a custom-made Code of Ethics in accordance to the means and needs of their specific organisations." (Preface)
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"Digital communications technology does many new things. Its spread means that it is no longer a case of a tiny minority of professionals and politicians having a monopoly on mass communication. Implicit in the observations of this report, is the recognition that - amongst other things - digitisatio
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n also disrupts old boundaries between inter-personal and mass communication. What used to be the subject of, or product of, communication between a few individuals, can increasingly be put into the public sphere. Much of this content remains personal in quality, despite it being public in availability. But there is also much that is of public interest. In some ways, this therefore threatens those institutions supposed to be specialising in public interest information. In other ways, it can help them not only reinforce this mission, but to also take a step towards expanding their role into becoming wider public interest content and commun-ications agencies. They can, in short, be the motive force that pulls personal conversations into focussing on journalism that is of common public interest. That image of leading the transformation of mass communication is, however, just one of the scenarios outlined in this report. The others point to lesser roles, even including extinction. It should be noted that scenarios are not predictions of the future, but attempts to highlight a range of possible options. They help guide action in one or other direction. The complication is that digitisation and all that comes with it can deal a surprise to even the best-considered scenario possibilities. Who would have thought that a search engine company (Google) could become such an effective player in the advertising arena? Or that newspaper newsrooms would start hiring video-capable staffers, or that some cell-phone companies would move into distributing content? Could anyone have guessed that a company like Twitter could attract and burn millions of dollars of investment without even a proper business plan about how it intends to make money? The digital revolution, if it is to succeed, needs to have top quality cadres in the newsrooms. In the face of these kinds of developments, it is tempting to throw up one’s hands and take a come-what-may approach. That’s preferable to the illusion of controlling and managing the process. At the same time, between these two extremes of paralysis and over-planning, there is a broad direction that can be identified and pursued. We may not know exactly where we are going, but - as this Report seeks to do - we can look at where we are and what’s immediately ahead. More fundamentally, however, there’s worth in remembering from whence we come. In other words, while looking at the present and near-present, and keeping an eye on what future scenarios we can imagine, we can hold onto our values. In the context of public broadcasting, these values are - in a nutshell - to focus mass communications on deepening democracy and development. These public interest values remain all the more valid in a time when the historical informational “service” model is being expanded to also function as a public interest communicational mode. Keeping these ideals aloft helps state-owned broadcasters steer a course between delivering government-interest and commercial-interest content. They help to define the meaning of universal access in the face of financial pressures and socio-economic divides. They empower people to see the big picture and to bring concerted action to bear on it. In sum, they help us reinvent “public service broadcasting” in a fashion appropriate to its contemporary possibilities. Roll on digitisation in Southern Africa - and the transformation of at least some state-owned broadcasters to become leaders in this process." ("Summing up", page 53-54)
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