SECTOR 2 2.8 All media fairly represent the voices of society and its minorities in its ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity Panellists generally agreed that not enough is being done to ensure that the diversity of voices in society are fully represented in the media. With regards to religious diversity, panellists noted that although Namibia is a secular state, media content is primarily Christian focused. ‘NBC only focuses on Christians and there is not much coverage of religious minorities.’ On political diversity (particularly in terms of the coverage of opposition parties) although some pronouncements and efforts have been made to level the playing field in terms of coverage, as the majority party is much better resourced opposition parties do not receive nearly as much coverage. Furthermore, given the extensive coverage of ministers and the president by the media (including during the campaign seasons when their party colours are often worn), the majority party also receives much more coverage than anticipated, ‘and [it] is difficult for civil society to pick up this bias’. There are several languages in which the media do not publish or broadcast; notably, NBC Radio has ten different language stations (see Indicator 2.1) and some community radio stations may have programmes in languages other than English. Private broadcasters that do not broadcast in English do so mainly in Oshiwambo (e.g. Omulunga Radio), German (e.g. Hitradio) and Afrikaans. NBC TV presents a weekly news report in all the country’s languages, but other than English, only the Oshiwambo language has a dedicated daily news bulletin in the morning, which is translated from the English nightly news on the previous day. One panellist remarked that culturally, the media also needs to keep up with the times and reflect the current context more accurately. ‘With the San people, there are certain media that represent these communities in a pristine form, which is archaeologically incorrect. We also need to deal with things economically or socially in the modern context. When you get an image, [you] get a romanticised popular version that the media buy into: but this is not always representative of the current [or] modern context.’ With regards to people with disability, a panellist noted that not enough is being done and that associations for the disabled have complained to various media about coverage of their events. ‘We invite the media to cover our events, but NBC hardly ever shows up! The Namibian Sun makes an effort to cover issues related to people with disabilities.’ NBC does, however, provide sign language interpretation in various programmes and on the daily news bulletins. ‘In 2014, a federation tried to take up an initiative to have newspapers print in braille, but the cost was an issue. Economically, it is not viable, but the public media should try to cater for that. Moreover, this is not only a media issue though. Government does not do enough to print, for example, legislation in braille.’ 31 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER NAMIBIA 2018