Nepal Monitor: UNESCO to Help Assess Nepal's Media Landscape

UNESCO unveils a plan to assess Nepal's media along five categories.

UNESCO Kathmandu has unveiled a plan to assess the country's media landscape. On Tuesday, October 28, 2010, it invited media professionals to discuss how the assessment can be carried out in Nepal.

UNESCO's Media Development Indicators will provide a broad guideline for the assessment, while it is expected that local adjustments will be made. The document outlines a system designed to identify the key characteristics of a media environment in which freedom of expression, independence and pluralism of the media can flourish and in return, the media can contribute to the democratization process.

The following is the introduction of document:

Media, democracy and development
Freedom of expression is a fundamental element of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is widely seen as underpinning democratic freedoms such as the right to form political parties, share political ideas, query the actions of public officials, and so on.

Media outlets are crucial to the exercise of freedom of expression because they provide the public platform through which the right is effectively exercised. The idea of media as a platform for democratic debate embraces a variety of overlapping functions. Media, in this context, refers to all those channels that carry news and public information. The media may be seen as: (See note 1)

* a channel of information and education through which citizens can communicate with each other

* a disseminator of stories, ideas and information

* a corrective to the "natural asymmetry of information" (Islam 2002:1) between governors and governed and between competing private agents

* a facilitator of informed debate between diverse social actors, encouraging the resolution of disputes by democratic means

* a means by which a society learns about itself and builds a sense of community, and which shapes the understanding of values, customs and tradition

* a vehicle for cultural expression and cultural cohesion within and between nations

* a watchdog of government in all its forms, promoting transparency in public life and public scrutiny of those with power through exposing corruption, maladministration and corporate wrongdoing

* a tool to enhance economic efficiency

* an essential facilitator of the democratic process and one of the guarantors of free and fair elections

* an advocate and social actor in its own right while respecting pluralistic values

It is equally apparent that sometimes the media may serve to reinforce the power of vested interests and exacerbate social inequalities by excluding critical or marginalized voices. The media may even promote conflict and social divisiveness.

The key question for those concerned with issues of free expression, good governance and human development, then, is how to nurture a media framework and practice which contributes to these overarching goals. This is a particularly acute concern in new or restored democracies, whose media systems have been warped or shattered by oppression, corruption or the effects of war and underdevelopment.

Even in more established democracies, the role of the media is a live issue because of the increasingly converged world of modern communications. The combination of cheap electronic devices linked to digital communications networks opens new opportunities for citizens to exercise their right to freedom of expression. However, the advance of this communications revolution is uneven within and between countries, and new communications platforms can be used to oppress as well as to liberate.

Many commentators argue that independent journalism is a necessary but not sufficient means of strengthening good governance and promoting human development. They [3] suggest that these goals are achieved most effectively under two conditions:

* In societies where channels of mass communications are free and independent of established interests; and in addition

* Where there is widespread access to these media

This suggests that any attempt to measure media development must embrace issues of both independence and access. It is not just the absence of restrictions on the media that matters, but the extent to which all sectors of society, especially the most marginalised, can access the media to gain information and make their voices heard.

Limited access to - or lack of engagement with - the media is a function of poverty and poor education. It may also be caused or exacerbated by language, gender, age, ethnicity or the urban-rural divide. There is also a need to promote information and media literacy.

The corollary of this analysis is the need for state intervention to promote a media environment charact erased by freedom of expression, pluralism and diversity, with laws restricting media freedom narrowly defined and limited to those necessary in a democracy, and with legal provisions that ensure a level economic playing field. This requires provisions for public and community-based media as well as private media.

Also vital is investment in human resources, specifically in building the professional capacity of media workers, both journalists and media managers, through academic and vocational training and the development of professional associations.

Infrastructural capacity is also crucial: promoting a diverse media environment requires investment in the means of communication, including the reception of broadcasts, the provision of electricity supplies and access to telephones and the Internet.

Within these categories of analysis there may be tensions and paradoxes. For example, low technical capacity may coexist with a positive legal and policy framework, as in Mali (Norris and Zinnbauer 2002:12). Elsewhere, media may evolve into a driver for greater openness even in an adverse political environment.

Finally, any analysis of the media's contribution to human development must also be situated in the context of rapid and far reaching changes in the platforms for communication (see UNDP 2006:15-20 for a useful summary). The dizzying growth in some regions of new tech nologies (Internet, SMS, mobile telephony) presents positive opportunities for democratisation, but also challenges in the form of fragmentation and (potentially) decreased opportunities to disseminate development messages to a large population through a limited number of media
channels.

Assessment tools, if they are to be meaningful, must incorporate these new communications platforms, and embrace the dynamism and adaptability of the media sector itself.

About this paper
Within the United Nations system, UNESCO's mandate to promote media development is unequivocal. The UNESCO Constitution commits the Organization "to promote the free flow of ideas by word and image". UNESCO's New Communication Strategy (adopted in 1989) sets out the Organization's objectives in the area of Communication and Information: "To encourage the free flow of information, at international as well as national levels, to promote the wider and better balanced dissemination of information, without any obstacle to freedom of expression, and to strengthen communication capacities in the developing countries in order to increase their participation in the communication process." The purpose of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) is "to contribute to sustainable development, democracy and good governance by fostering universal access to and distribution of inform ation and knowledge through strengthening the capacities of developing countries and countries in transition in the field of electronic media and print press". (See note 2)

This paper has been prepared in order to define indicators of media development in line with the priority areas of the
IPDC:

* promotion of freedom of expression and media pluralism

* development of community media

* human resource development (capacity building of media professionals and institutional capacity building)

The paper is firmly located in the framework established by the five UNESCO declarations on Promoting Independent and Pluralistic Media (Windhoek Declaration and those of Almaty, Santiago, Sana'a and Sofia [See note 3]), endorsed by the Organization's General Conferences, which provide the overarching set of principles from which these outcomes and indicators are derived.

It should also be clear that in the spirit of these declarations, UNESCO is not calling for further regulation of the news media - to the contrary - but rather for an overdue emphasis on the overall enabling environment within which independent journalism can flourish. Training journalists in reporting skills is a worthy enterprise, but of little ultimate impact if the journalists are not empowered to practice their trade and the enabling environment conducive to the free exercise of their profession.

The paper suggests five major categories of indicators that can be used to analyse the media development of a country. Each category is broken down into a number of component issues which in turn contain a series of broad indicators.

Finally there are means of verification and potential data sources identified.

It should be noted that these indicators are not designed to provide a longitudinal analysis over time, or a means for comparing different countries; they are an analytic tool designed to help stakeholders assess the state of the media and measure the impact of media development programmes.

As indicators they are diagnostic tools, not commandments- conceptualised with the purpose of assisting media development programmes, not imposing conditionality. And finally, it should be clear that this is intended as a living document that will be tested and adjusted on the ground by its ultimate intended users - the journalists and news organizations and citizens' groups working to strengthen media on the local level.

Specific methodology
This paper builds upon a previous analysis of existing initiatives to measure media development which emp loyed a diverse range of methodologies.(See note 4) This paper does not prescribe a fixed methodological approach, preferring a 'toolkit' approach in which indicators can be tailored to the particularities of the national context.

Some generic considerations in selecting media development indicators have been adopted in this paper:

* using quantitative measurements whenever possible

* choosing indicators where measurement data is sufficiently reliable in quality to permit confident decision-making

* disaggregating indicators by gender or other population characteristics

* ensuring that indicators are separated out to address one key issue at a time

* considering the practical implications of cost and time for collecting measurement data

However, at this point it is necessary to add a cautionary note. There is a lack of data at the global level and this document alone cannot therefore provide all the information required to use its approach as a diagnostic tool. There is a need for further work to identify the data needed for measuring the suggested indicators. It might be useful to draw upon the experiences of others in establishing reliable national data sources, e.g. in the health field and sentinel surveillance centres for monitoring HIV etc.

Data that is available will change over time, and the durability of data will affect the extent to which it can be relied upon. Judgement will have to be exercised in using available data that may be several years out of date, particularly given the dynamic nature of the communications environment. There is also a risk that there will be an unconscious weighting towards indicators that do offer a more solid means of verifi cation, at the expense of those which may be equally important but less measurable.

Finally, many of the indicators will inevitably be based upon qualitative or subjective assessments, notwithstanding the desire to find those which are quantitative and measurable where possible. Any comprehensive assessment of media will require such judgements and the indicators in this document recognise this. What is important is for subjective or qualitative indicators to be arrived at transparently, with a supporting narrative that explains how they have been designed.

Making indicators gender-sensitive and pro-poor
The UNDP Guide to Measuring the Impact of Right to Information Programmes outlines key considerations for making right to information indicators gender-sensitive and pro-poor (UNDP 2006:11-12). The guide notes that:

* formal equality of men and women before the law may conceal differences in actual equality

* Information systems geared to traditionally defined citizenship rights may exclude women, especially in societies where women's access to the public sphere is restricted

* women's voices must be integrated from the start of developing a system of monitoring and evaluation

* similar considerations apply to making indicators propoor: much attention needs to be focused on how the poor access information, especially in rural areas where communication systems may be inoperative and illiteracy levels are high

These insights are instructive to any initiative to define indicators of media development. For example, the availability of newspapers or other printed media may be of little relevance to democratic development in a rural area with widespread illiteracy.

An awareness of gender inequality may also extend into the terrain of media ownership. (See note 5) Some initiatives have usefully extended this awareness of gender and economic inequality into the sphere of ICT. (See note 6)

Notes