麻豆约拍

A future agenda for media assistance cannot simply repeat the same strategies that have applied – sometimes successfully, sometimes not, in the past. What do we know has worked, what do we know has not worked, what might work in the future?

I suspect there is widespread agreement that the democratic information space of the future will require strong, public interest institutions capable of generating journalism and other media content capable of underpinning informed public debate. The arguments of a decade ago, that citizen journalism would replace journalistic institutions, and , now seem perilously outdated. Our information spaces have rarely been more vulnerable to manipulation and distortion, our public debate rarely more driven to polarisation and subject to echo chamber effects, and people’s trust in the information they receive, rarely weaker.

Access to information that people can trust, find relevant, that underpins informed democratic debate, and can hold power to account, will depend on the existence of media institutions, not just information networks. That remains the major challenge of media support. It is a challenge that we need fresh thinking to achieve.

The most obvious area where we can expect action is in continuing and perhaps revamping media investment strategies. The dream, some would argue chimera, of media assistance has been to invest in the kinds of independent media who can develop a sustainable business model sufficient to support high quality independent, public interest journalism. There have been good examples where this approach has worked and fostered fantastic, independent news organisations, most notably through . I stand to be corrected but I think most (but certainly not all) of those successes have been in large markets (like Indonesia and Malaysia). The challenge comes when applying this approach in smaller markets, particularly in fragile states, given the current economic and political realities.

Fragile states have two overlapping challenges. The market is small and often highly fractured making it extremely difficult to build a profitable business model capable of sustaining independent journalism. That challenge has grown as digital and social media has, as it has done elsewhere, diverted funding away from independent media markets. 

The second is that politics has proved overwhelmingly powerful.

I had the privilege of working alongside wonderful Ugandan colleagues in the 1990s, as the media market – print and broadcast - thrived in the wake of economic and political liberalisation. The opening of economic and political space led to media, such as that owned by the Monitor Group, doing perhaps the best journalism in Africa, and outstanding innovations such as “ebimeeza” open air radio talk shows. All of which did much to nourish the democracy that was emerging after the authoritarian horrors of the Amin and Obote years. This was an entrepreneurial, commercial revolution built on the individual commitments and journalistic talents of remarkable people. It enabled, as never before, communicative power to leak from government to citizen.

We have witnessed, since the mid-2000s, the slow death of the independent media sector in the country . Partly, these businesses were never going to be money printing machines given the broader challenges the internet brought to almost all media markets. But much of it was that pressure from government and other political actors simply became too strong.

This is just one example but it is a familiar story in fragile states with weak economies characterised by highly contested politics. The political markets have outgunned the economic markets. It is not that the market is simply not there (although it is probably increasingly the case that it isn’t). It is that the political pressures that come with doing good journalism and forming an independent media and creative industry blew market forces away. It is a story told in different ways, in different contexts and with different drivers in the vast majority of states our own analysis at 麻豆约拍 Media Action has focused on in recent years including , , , , and

That doesn’t mean the market cannot form part of the solution. It means we need to spark a creative debate about making markets work for freedom. This will mean calling on economists, technologists, and political scientists - not just media - and drawing on experience and existing research into market economies in fragile states. This requires a real interdisciplinary approach of the kind that our academic, organisational and donor structures have proved poorly equipped to facilitate in the past.

But, however imaginative the proposals, the market will not provide a long-term solution to supporting public interest media. It hasn’t in the past, and conditions, especially in fragile states, are just too hostile for it to be expected to do in the future - which is why we need to think, equally creatively, about public subsidy.

This does not necessarily mean rolling out a 麻豆约拍-style public service broadcast model It means looking at solutions that can provide sustained investment in independent media over a significant period of time. Can entertainment media be levied to support public interest journalism? Can public interest media funds be set up within countries where public interest media is most threatened? Can we think of other ways in which licence fees for public interest media can be raised? (there are many models for this), can the value inherent in data cross-subsidise good journalism? I don’t pretend to have answers, but there needs to be creative thinking about what those answers should be, without resting on the assumption that investment automatically leads to commercial sustainability.

More fundamentally still, solving these issues will be insufficient if they don’t connect with people. Much media support has focused on media for a relatively elite audience. Media freedom and media sustainability indicators focus on whether media is free and sustainable and less on on whether they are valued, trusted or relevant to the populations of their societies, especially those outside an educated middle class. This is especially important at a time of digital and demographic transformation.

The donor and media assistance community are finally realising there are no digital, magic bullets to these problems and that the digital revolution is as much a driver of market failure and disinformation and a wrecker of public interest media as it is an enabler of it (although there remain many exciting opportunities). But it is a transformation whose effects have only just started to take hold (smart phone access is still far from universal but in a small number of years it will be) and any media support strategy that does not root itself in the realities of 21st century information and communication networks access will fail.

And finally here, we need to pay more attention to re-balancing the incentive structures so that there is a greater political price to be paid for political interference in independent media – that means really embarrassing and holding to account in a much more insistent way those who are shutting down or co-opting the media. This would consist of further investment in media freedom advocacy and a much more robust approach and focused interest from governments committed to democracy and freedom of expression both North and South (sadly a diminishing number – in both number and power). Attacks on media freedom and independent media systems proliferate because those behind the attacks prosper and get away with it. Events such as organised by UNESCO take on greater importance in this context.

There are plenty of other areas we can talk about – improving support to media around elections (which is generally very poorly prioritised, organised and integrated into electoral support strategies), understanding and more effectively supporting public interest media in the context of violent extremism, working out how best to support independent journalism in fragile states where the risks are so often so great, better structuring media support within governance programming and much more besides. These issues present challenges for all of us.

I talk about just some of things 麻豆约拍 Media Action is planning especially in my area of research and policy.

James Deane is director of policy and research at 麻豆约拍 Media Action.