SECTOR 4 best chance of enforcing the respect of professional and ethical standards, in the same way as similar orders in the legal, medical, engineering and other professions. 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: 1.9 (2008=1.9; 2011=2.3) 4.3 Salary levels and general working conditions, including safety, for journalists and other media practitioners are adequate. Salaries and working conditions are generally poor in the news media and are worse for journalist working in the private sector20. The industry’s collective bargaining convention sets the minimum wage for journalists at CFA180,000 a month (US $360), but most news organisations pay much less. In the biggest news organisations, the average entry level salary is CFA75,000 (US $150), while management level employees receive CFA400,000 (US $800) per month. One panellist strongly believed that “in spite of the existence of a collectively bargained salary scale, private sector media proprietors seem to have conspired not to pay their workers above a certain amount of money.” Employers generally ignore the labour code and do not give journalists benefits such as social insurance coverage. Many smaller newspapers and audio-visual outlets simply do not pay their staff, asking them to live off hand-outs and tips from event organisers. Journalists often harass event organisers for money, use blackmail to extort money from rogue public figures, or accept bribes to do the “dirty jobs” of political rivals, in part because of poor or no salaries. It is fast becoming common practice for media owners to place young recruits on probation stipends for as many as three years in complete defiance of the provisions of the labour code, which provides for a maximum of two probation terms of three or six months. “Young reporters often accept peanuts or nothing at all because often they have no other choice.” 20 Salaries are higher in the public sector where most journalists are civil servants. In some instances, journalists receive two salaries, one from the public service and another from the public media employing them. Overall, they enjoy more benefits that the peers of the private sector. 124 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER CAMEROON 2014