麻豆约拍

Many more issues and strategies can be considered but, ultimately, there is little point considering them unless there is space to properly organise the 21st century approaches necessary for media assistance to succeed.

Several things need to happen.

First, those funding international support to the media need to link up more to share learning of what they think works and what doesn't. This has not happened successfully in the past but signs are emerging that it can now. Private philanthropic foundations – such as the Omidyar, Ford, Open Society, Gates, Rockefeller, MacArthur and Knight Foundations - are leading the way in sharing information and strategic thinking between them better than even a year or two ago. Bilateral agencies (especially long standing supporters of independent media like the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Swiss Development Cooperation and now DFID) are re-examining and reprioritising media support while reaching out to other donors to explore how they can learn from each other. The OECD Development Assistance Committee Governance Network (full disclosure: I advise it) has provided the most valuable space in recent months and years for these issues to be prioritised and examined, and there are hopes of a more intensive level of communication between donors on the issues as a result. The National Endowment for Democracy Center for International Media Assistance is playing a particularly strong role here.

Such conversations have always proved challenging. Various donors have often had different agendas and objectives ranging from supporting independent media as an intrinsic public good (something that is thankfully being reprioritised) to seeing it as a means to improve specific development objectives (improving accountability, fostering greater social cohesion, challenging misinformation, shifting societal norms around gender for example). But the conditions for a really coherent and productive donor conversation in this area have rarely been more fertile.

The second is between practitioners and donors. I will be candid here: media assistance donors (with some exceptions) do not always have a good reputation among practitioners. Practitioners have, with at least modest success, tried to create a more coherent sector. Through the  in particular very different - often competing - organisations talk to each other, share analysis and information, and at least start to work towards better coordination mechanisms and generate advocacy for what is needed to improve public interest media. GFMD has sought to give its developing country/non-western members interests special prominence.

The same has not happened among donors. The efforts at donor coordination highlighted above are welcome but late, and the feeling in the sector is that donors frequently chop and change priorities, pay little attention to evidence (and insufficiently invest in it), and invest too little in their own lesson learning. Some have acknowledged this. A particularly welcome revealed just how little the EU knew what it was funding in this space, let alone understanding what worked and did not work. As a result it has now set up a new technical resource to advise it in the future. Practitioners tend to know a great deal about the problems they are working to solve but that knowledge is not always well captured by donors. There needs to be better information sharing here. There are particular dangers that failed strategies of the past will be repeated.

Third, and perhaps most important, is for the rest of the development community to recognise just how critical a free and independent media that's capable of underpinning informed democratic societies is to sustaining, and advancing, human progress. Even within most governance support strategies, let alone across the rest of the , media support issues are poorly prioritised.

And finally, there is a need for a much stronger research base which, as noted above, is interdisciplinary in nature. I have found it curious that the most insightful and useful research we tend to use emanates from economists and political scientists, not from media scholars.

To be taken seriously in the media assistance space in recent years, especially in the digital space, it has been important to cultivate a persona of “impatient optimism”. But I believe we are in serious trouble and do not currently have the strategies, sector wide architectures, resources, research or learning systems to make the kind of difference to 21st century media and communication systems that sustainable and functioning democracies and a sustainable development agenda needs. We have much good practice to build on but there is a poor collective record of building on it.

Making a real difference will take years, and optimism has proved neither warranted nor particularly effective. We need fresh approaches, new determination and a collective preparedness – not least from donors – to commit ourselves for a long haul. Pessimism is not energising, but a fresh and sober realism may be our best starting point for the road ahead.

James Deane is the Director of Policy and Research at 麻豆约拍 Media Action

The explores the relationship between media development and Social and Behaviour Change Communication.