Media Institute of Southern Africa : Promoting Media Diversity . Pluralism . Self-Sufficiency . Independence

As a consequence of this, four self-regulation media institutions have been established within the region and one more is being revived. This is a remarkable achievement seeing that before SPP1 there were two functioning self-regulation institutions for the media within the SADC region.

We have self-regulation media institutions in Botswana, Zambia, Swaziland, South Africa and Tanzania. The situation in Malawi has not changed. The self-regulation council remains non-operational despite efforts to revive it. In Namibia, the code of ethics that has been developed, was not adopted by all media institutions and therefore has not been implemented. Adding to this problem is the fact that the ombudsman office that was set up to implement the code of ethics, remains ineffective two years after its establishment.

In South Africa, there is a functioning and efficient ombudsman office that was established by the print media. There is also a voluntary Broadcasting Complaints Commission and the Broadcast Monitoring Complaints Commission, the latter is established through legislation.

However, in South Africa ethical issues relating to plagiarism and insensitive reporting have recently surfaced and needs to be addressed.

The MISA initiative to give annual awards to media as a form of promoting media standards and excellence has taken root and has become a prominent feature in some of the eleven countries were MISA operates. Every year, media practitioners are awarded media awards.

The regional secretariat also continued giving the Media Freedom award and the John Manyarara Investigative Journalism award which continue to attract wide interest. For the first time in 2004, MISA sponsored the regional gender awards at the MISA and Gender Links organised Gender and Media Summit which will be an event held every two years. This is based on the MISA view that professional journalism is about excellence in reporting, consequently, it must embrace gender sensitive reporting that is empowering, fair and balanced. Back