It’s going to be a year of media development for me. That is, if the political people don’t throw too many press-freedom threats into the works.
December brought the news that I’ve been appointed to the board of the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) — the statutory body set up to promote grassroots media growth. This is no token appointment — there are meetings galore lined up already.
Coincidentally, December also saw me join a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) process to set up an index to measure a country’s state of ”media development”. Such an index can help gauge a country’s ability to be a player in the global information age.
An advanced media system does not necessarily mean that a nation can count itself to be a knowledge society. For example, the United States has an enormous amount of media, but no one would describe Americans in general as deeply knowledgeable about the rest of the world.
Still, a high media density is at least a precondition for information flows. These in turn are essential for spreading knowledge that can drive democracy and development.
The Unesco process kicked off with a paper by former Index on Censorship leader Andrew Puddephat, who identified more than 26 systems for measuring media health around the world.
My contribution to the discussion is that ”media” and ”development” need to be defined before you can properly say what counts as a relevant indicator.
For instance, if you define ”media” only in narrow terms, then it’s not relevant to look at the penetration of cellphones. But while cellphones are not (yet) being used to spread journalism, we need to keep our eyes open to changes here.
Another point is deciding if ”media development” encompasses not just the quantity of media, but also developing the quality. If so, then it becomes important to assess the calibre and reach of public-service content within any given media system.
These matters are particularly important for South Africa, where arguably our media ought to be doing journalism that helps compensate for our failed schools, which also promotes HIV/Aids education, deepens democracy and so on.
The availability of journalism to all sectors of society is also critical. It would be myopic to say that we have a developed media system if South Africans do not enjoy access to robust news journalism about local issues.
In this context, the MDDA exists as a non-market mechanism to promote news for communities where a lack of skills, finance and advertising serves to limit the evolution of quality local media.
One constraint facing the agency, however, is limited finance. It had a mere R20-million to disperse last year. When you consider that major media company Avusa was last year offered R6-billion by would-be buyers, you can see the limited scale in terms of which the MDDA currently can be effective.
Media development, once you define it, depends on an optimum configuration of money, skills, advertising and attention to quality journalism — mobilised at all levels of society.
It also hangs on a progressive legal and political environment. At minimum, media development means that politicians should get out of the way; at maximum, institutions like the MDDA need really serious support.
Although politics as news pulls in audiences for media in South Africa, the politics of messing with media freedom distracts everyone’s energies from a focus on media development.
This year will likely see a much tougher economy than 2007. That means that media growth and development, and I, will have enough to deal with, without having to also fend off political pressures.
Certainly a shrinking of media freedom in 2008 would not see South Africa score very well on the Unesco media-development index.
The African Editors’ Forum had hoped to get the African Union to declare 2008 ”the year of African media”. Such a fillip for media development might still come in 2009. In the meantime, it’s important to maintain focus on growing the size and role of the media sector.