21 July 2008
Independent News Media Important for Democracy Worldwide
State Department official outlines U.S. support for media assistance
Washington -- Promoting independent news media is an important part of efforts to support democracy worldwide and it deserves a higher international profile, says a new report from a State Department-funded group.
David Kaplan, the report’s managing editor and principal writer, told America.gov the document assesses the myriad efforts of the public and private sectors to promote independent news media worldwide.
With communism’s fall in Europe and elsewhere, Kaplan said news organizations and independent journalists overseas have taken on a more important role, one that is emphasized in the report entitled Empowering Independent Media: U.S. Efforts to Foster Free and Independent News Around the World.
The report was published by the Center for International Media Assistance, established in 2006 by the National Endowment for Democracy to improve U.S. assistance programs for free and independent media worldwide. The center is funded by an annual grant from the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL).
Kaplan, an award-winning investigative reporter, said much more needs to be done to expand independent news media’s “pool of donors” and increase the amount of funding such media receive from government and private sources. Kaplan directs the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the nonpartisan Washington-based Center for Public Integrity.
FREE PRESS VITAL TO DEMOCRACY
Kaplan said development assistance for a free and responsible press has “proven itself … vital to democratization and development,” yet it receives a “relative pittance in development money.” As a result, “we’re calling both for more funding and for more attention” to help independent media flourish.
Promoting independent media, Kaplan said, refers to developing indigenous news organizations, which involves “everything from community radio stations in Afghanistan to sophisticated investigative reporting teams” in India.
He said only about a half-dozen people at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department are responsible for overseeing media development funding from the American government “and they’ve all got many other things to do on their jobs.”
Kaplan said that because of the cross-sector positive effects of media development, it should be as high a priority as efforts to promote other elements of civil society, such as encouraging free and fair elections and training police.
Even though “a lot of terrific work” is being done to promote independent news media, the biggest challenge is focusing attention on its importance, Kaplan said.
According to the report, U.S. donors spent about $142 million in 2006 on foreign independent media projects, with donations “split about evenly” between the U.S. government and private U.S. sources. Another $100 million globally came from organizations not based in the United States.
“That’s a drop in the bucket given the kind of impact” that developing responsible, independent news media can have, Kaplan said, adding, “[T]his is a lever we’re simply not pressing enough.”
The report says that because media development affects “multiple fields, it often receives U.S. funding as a part of other projects -- under civil society and election reform, for example, or AIDS prevention and health care.”
“Frequently, this has meant that media development is addressed as a second thought,” the report said.
FREE EXPRESSION IS “OXYGEN” FOR INDEPENDENT NEWS MEDIA
David Kramer, an assistant secretary at the State Department who heads the DRL bureau, said July 15 that the report examines the experience gained from 20 years of U.S. media assistance efforts and provides an “analysis of the current state of media assistance” aimed at “establishing a solid baseline for further media development work.”
Speaking at a forum on Capitol Hill where the report was released, Kramer said “freedom of expression is oxygen to independent media.”
When independent news media are “under siege, democracy is undermined,” he said. (See “World Press Freedom Day Supports Journalists Facing Threats.”)
Kramer said his bureau has provided more than $56 million in media-related projects globally since fiscal year 2004. Kramer said the money goes, for example, to support student-run university-based community radio stations in the Near East.
In Southeast Asia, DRL funding helps media and civil society organizations learn how to “harness information communication technology that can overcome political and economic barriers to freedom of expression and information,” he said.
Journalist Ellen Hume, who also spoke at the forum, told America.gov the report is unique in mapping how the United States has tried to support the development of “journalism capacity” in other countries.
“Those of us who work in this area think you cannot have a democratic political culture without open media and open access to information,” said Hume, whose research contributed to the report. Hume is research director at the Center for Future Civic Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers.
Hume said the report succeeds in providing an overview “for the first time on how independent media have developed over the last 20 years.” The study of independent media is a “pretty new field,” which is why the report has such importance, Hume said.
The report on promoting independent media is available on the Web site of the Center for International Media Assistance.
