The topic of public media has been notable throughout the year in view of the essential function they play in facilitating good governance and access to information even for underserved communities. Public media are expected to serve a wide section of society based on their very establishment as a public good. This mainly emanates from the fact that public media are funded from public funds or special income through television levies and grants, for example. Secondly, by their very title, ‘public media’ are expected to have wide programming and inclusive content that may not necessarily be profit- motivated. It is for this reason that many stakeholders, government inclusive, continue to call for fair content that is representative of the various interests in society as opposed to a particular section. For a long time, media associations have been calling for true transformation from a “state media” into “public media” through the promulgation of statutes, review of regulation/management structures or enhancement of the board appointment processes 11 to devolve or reduce the real/perceived influence of government officials. The review could also include a revision of the funding model in order to enhance editorial independence. This has continued to be a challenge for public media which are often debtridden and overly dependent on the government 12. There is a need, therefore, to empower public media outlets for them to be truly financially independent and sustainably so. Another notable occurrence during the quarter under review was a resurgence of the COVID19 pandemic towards the end of the quarter in December, threatening a possible re-introduction of preventative restrictions. Below is a representation of the COVID-19 trajectory 13: Discussed further in the legal trends below During the quarter under review, it was revealed that the three main public media institutions owed the NAPSA monthly contributions. ZNBC, for example, reportedly owed over eight hundred million Kwacha as at 31st December, 2020, while Times of Zambia owed over 19 million Kwacha and the amount owed by the Zambia Daily Mail was not known. See https://www.znbc.co.zm/news/kasanda-engages-tambatamba-ondebt/ and https://tiozambia.com/znbc-among-media-companies-owing-napsa/ 13 Sourced from the COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. See the data repository at https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19 11 12 17