SECTOR 2 In terms of gender diversity, a panellist opined that the media do not fairly represent LGBTI people. ‘There is a lot of mis-gendering and de-gendering of LGBTI issues. The media will, for example, use a photograph of a transgender person before their transition, thereby presenting them as the sex that they no longer identify as. They also don’t give thought to the use of the correct pronoun. And even after these qualms have been expressed, there is the question of identity. Even with the terminology – for example with the continued use of the term "sodomy" – there is not enough sensitivity around language use. From my personal experience, I think that by not being sensitive to these and their issues, the media are inciting more marginalisation of marginalised groups.’ Importantly, the office of the media ombudsman has received requests for sensitivity training on topics such as LGBTI, mental illness, the San community, Down’s Syndrome – and is looking into how best to address these requests. Scores: Individual scores: 1 Country does not meet indicator 2 Country meets only a few aspects of indicator 3 Country meets some aspects of indicator 4 Country meets most aspects of indicator 5 Country meets all aspects of the indicator Average score: Score of previous years: ✓ ✓ ✓✓ ✓ ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓ 2.2 2005: n/a; 2007: n/a; 2009: n/a; 2011: 2.5; 2015: 2.3 2.9 Media cover the full spectrum of economic, cultural, political, social, national and local perspectives and conduct investigative stories Politics and economics tend to dominate media coverage, with much of the content being event-driven – particularly with respect to government events. ‘NBC, for example, doesn’t do much in terms of investigative stories. They are always covering the person, not the facts.’ Culturally, not much media coverage can be seen – whether on private or state media, or from the national news agency (NAMPA) which has an office in every region. ‘NBC has a Content Hub, whose role is to get stories on different topics, including different cultural activities and so forth. So, there is an effort (to cover more cultural content), but there is an imbalance and little from the Content Hub makes its way onto the air.’ The national broadcaster has also renamed and relocated ten of its radio stations in order to broaden its appeal to the communities targeted by those stations. 32 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER NAMIBIA 2018