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Empowering Independent Media: U.S. Efforts to Foster a Free Press and an Open Internet Around the World
Deep Insights

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), 2nd ed. (2012), 149 pp.

"This report examines seven central areas of media development—funding, digital media, sustainability, media law, journalists' safety, journalism education, and monitoring and evaluation. It also delves in-depth into four areas deserving of greater attention: citizen journalism, investigative jour ... more

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Calling the Shots: How Ownership Structures Affect the Independence of News Media

Michelle J. Foster

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2012), 35 pp.

"At an international level, the media development community should advocate for standards governing media cross-ownership limitations, best practices in media licensing, and the licensing of the broadcast spectrum. States should adopt net neutrality and support increased uncensored access to social ... more

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Making Media Development More Effective

Tara Susman-Peña

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2012), 42 pp.

"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 examin ... more

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The Medium Versus the Message: U.S. Government Funding for Media in an Age of Disruption

Anne Nelson

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2012), 28 pp.

"The new priorities include: 1. Expanding the access in developing countries to digital platforms. 2. Devising and promoting uses for new platforms (especially mobile) for functions that occupy a new, poorly defined space between traditional journalism and other modes of information. 3. Contesting o ... more

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Working in Concert: Coordination and Collaboration in International Media Development

Walter Dean

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2012), 27 pp.

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Challenges for Independent News Media in Pakistan

Sherry Ricchiardi

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2012), 47 pp.

"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 ... more

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Covering Elections: The Challenges of Training the Watchdogs

Rosemary Armao

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2012), 36 pp.

"Covering elections is not just coverage of one “grand event,” and training must reflect that. Short-term training just in advance of election day has been mostly discounted as ineffective. More must be done to cast elections as part of a critical on-going political process and to equip journali ... more

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Content Analysis: Can Shared Indicators Improve Monitoring and Evaluation?

Erich Sommerfeldt

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2012), 24 pp.

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On Media Development: An Unorthodox Empirical View

Daniel Kaufmann

Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2012), 26 slides

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Dangerous Work: Violence Against Mexico’s Journalists and Lessons from Colombia

Douglas Farah

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2012), 32 pp.

"Turning the tide on the killing of journalists involves several steps, but primarily it is a matter of having the political will to acknowledge the issue as important and ending the impunity for those responsible for the violence. These steps include: following through on making attacks on the medi ... more

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A Pilot Study for GFMD’s Media Development Toolkit: Testing Standards, Strengthening Professionalism. An Assessment of Ghana’s Media Landscape

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA); IREX; Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) (2012), 49 pp.

"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 ... more

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The Video Revolution

Jane Sasseen

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2012), 43 pp.

"Citizen journalists across the globe are using blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other new tools to spread articles, blog posts, videos, and photos of news happening in their countries. The new video journalists use these broader tools as well, taking full advantage of social media to share th ... more

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Voices from Villages: Community Radio in the Developing World

Mary Myers

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2011), 52 pp.

"Since the 1990s community radio has mushroomed throughout the developing world. In fact it has grown faster than either state or commercial radio. Across Africa, community radio grew, on average, by a significant 1,386 percent between 2000 and 2006. Asia and Latin America have also seen remarkable ... community radio booms. This has been due mainly to the widespread liberalization of the airwaves, the falling costs of the necessary technology, and a thirst for alternatives to government-controlled and commercial media. International aid agencies are showing ever greater interest in community media’s ability to inform and empower. More governments are acknowledging the contribution of community media to education, public health, and economic development and are creating policy and legal frameworks to enable its expansion. Nevertheless, community radio still faces repression in many countries. This report explores the reasons for this expansion and the constraints and challenges community radio still faces. It also looks at community radio’s record in terms of development and examines its real achievements against its ideals. For purposes of this report, community radio is defined as radio by and for the community, be it a physical community or a community of interest, with an emphasis on community ownership and management on a not-for-profit basis. Wider and more hybrid definitions are acknowledged and explored, and community radio’s differences from vernacular, fundamentalist, and hate radio are clarified. The report also points out where community radio is most prevalent in the developing world and the reasons for this, looking especially at the kind of pro-freedom policies that allow it to thrive and what positive change is possible where community radio works well. A short case study takes a more detailed look at India, where community radio was only recently allowed. The major challenge for community radio continues to be economic survival and sustainability beyond donor and NGO support. Various models are explored, including some new initiatives that emphasize a more business-oriented approach than has been the case in the past. Another big challenge is the right of community radio to exist at all. The record of the support given by the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC, in the French acronym) is examined in light of these continuing struggles, as well as the work of national-level platforms also engaged in advocacy." (Executive summary, page 5) more

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News on the Go: How Mobile Devices Are Changing the World’s Information Ecosystem

Dale Peskin

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2011), 26 pp.

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Matching the Market and the Model: The Business of Independent News Media

Michelle J. Foster

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2011), 34 pp.

"According to this paper, many media businesses lack management skills and experience in developing effective business models. "Compounding this is a lack of media development assistance targeted to media managers, the expansion of economic constraints on media businesses, and a lack of access to in ... more

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Media Codes of Ethics: The Difficulty of Defining Standards

Eugene L. Meyer

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2011), 48 pp.

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Media and the Law: An Overview of Legal Issues and Challenges

Peter Noorlander

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2011), 26 pp.

"This report provides an overview of the different kinds of laws that affect the media and explains how they are used in many countries to influence the operations of news outlets and the information they offer. It focuses on restrictive laws more than on those of the enabling and empowering variety ... more

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Iraq’s News Media After Saddam: Liberation, Repression, and Future Prospects

Sherry Ricchiardi

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2011), 46 pp.

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Continental Shift: New Trends in Private U.S. Funding for Media Development

Anne Nelson

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2011), 26 pp.

"This work is an update of the October 2009 CIMA report, Experimentation and Evolution in Private U.S. Funding of Media Development by the same author. The field of private sector funding of independent media abroad has continued to undergo a massive upheaval over the past two years. Both the 2008 r ... more

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Caught in the Middle: Central and Eastern European Journalism at a Crossroads

Ellen Hume

Washington, DC: Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (2011), 93 pp.

"Particularly as journalism transitions to new digital, mobile, and Internet formats, Central and Eastern European countries need to experiment with new business and usage models and find strong advocates for independent media. Instead, the current economic, political and social momentum is pushing ... journalists toward sensationalized and partisan tabloid content that does little to earn respect for accountability journalism or engage citizens about important issues. Some nationalistic governments are seeking to co-opt media independence in all of its forms. Some of the best independent journalists are being driven to work for quixotic websites with little audience and no money. Media ownership is a paramount issue in the region, especially in Romania, where five oligarchs hold sway, with little interest in good journalism, and in Latvia, where the one strong daily paper has been sold, after 20 good years, to a politically ambitious local businessman. A pattern has developed in the region: The international media investors such as Rupert Murdoch and Ronald Lauder, who developed the new marketplace for private media after communism fell, are selling out to local entrepreneurs who are interested in harvesting the political potential of these now-established media venues. European Union (EU) accession prompted a flurry of press freedom laws that remain on the books in most of these countries but are not workable without constant vigilance and activism. Organizations like the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, the Latvian Open Society Institute, and the Romanian Center for Independent Journalism are holding their fingers in the dike but are not getting much help from either EU or other Western media developers, who are triaging their aid, moving to the hot zones in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Africa. Public broadcasters, buffeted by political pressure and tabloid competition from private channels, are in a downward spiral, with declining audiences and budgets. Some scholars question their survival, but others hope that digitizing their channels will breathe new life into public media. On the bright side, each country studied has pluralistic media options, and continues to produce investigative journalists of fierce integrity and great skill. Gazeta Wyborcza in Poland remains a strong newspaper and website, with quality journalism and respect throughout the region, even if Polish public television has become a tabloid mess. The Czech Republic still has some effective news organizations and an independent public television news division. Unlike during Communist times, or the still frozen autocracies to the East, journalists in Central and Eastern Europe are able to stay alive and out of jail while uncovering information and publishing it to hold the powerful accountable, even if it is only on a niche website to an elite audience. Such Web-based news organizations, like Latvia’s Ir.lv, the Czech Republic’s Aktuálně.cz, and Hungary’s, www.hirszerzo.hu and oknyomozó.hu, are worth watching. Finally, it is clear that the media developers contributed a lot, and learned a lot, but moved away from Central and Eastern Europe too soon. They should consider new initiatives both regionally and nationally, to support: investigative journalism projects with genuine public importance and ethical boundaries; journalism associations that stress professionalism and counteract the political elites’ dismissal of journalism’s value; media criticism publications that hold journalists, owners, and politicians accountable to the public; media literacy training, as well as a larger curriculum that stresses the rights and obligations of citizens in a democracy." (Executive summary, pages 6-7) more

Empowering Independent Media: U.S. Efforts to Foster a Free Press and an Open Internet Around the World Deep Insights

Empowering Independent Media: U.S. Efforts to Foster a Free Press and an Open Internet Around the World
Deep Insights