SECTOR 1 are expected to help the police monitor and decrypt digital and website content. Law enforcement agencies also routinely work with service providers during criminal investigations. In 2014, a prominent lawyer was indicted in a counterterrorism case based on evidence gathered from the transcription of his telephone conversations. According to one panellist “talking of a systematic and coordinated effort to filter web-based information content in the case of Cameroon would be an exaggeration, as there are only marginal cases of monitoring and interference”. 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: 4.1 (2008=n/a; 2011=1.5) 1.10 Civil society in general and media lobby groups actively advance the cause of media freedom. Le Grand Palabre, an initiative of the weekly Germinal newspaper, is a public forum that brings together experts to discuss national issues. Following its ban by the authorities, media and civil society organisations petitioned for it to be reinstated. In May 2014, media organisation issued a communiqué denouncing what they termed an affront to journalistic ethics after La Scene newspaper ran a front page headline in which it called the Ivorian Minister of Communication, Affousiattou Bamba Lamine, who was on an official visit to Cameroon, a “prostitute”. A new association La Fédération des Éditeurs de Presse13 has managed to negotiate the elimination of the value added tax on newsprint entering Cameroon and is in talks with the country’s major newspaper distributor, Messa Presse, to reduce newspaper sales commissions paid by publishers. Examples like these, which speak to the involvement of civil society and/or media organisations themselves in promoting and defending the cause of media freedom, are, however, few. On the whole, media organisations are not seen as actively engaged in promoting the interests of journalists. The majority of registered 13 Federation of newspaper publishers 90 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER CAMEROON 2014