Professionalism and accountability The fight for self-regulation of the region’s media continued in the year under review with the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) chapters in Swaziland and Zimbabwe launching self-regulatory bodies. MISA chapters in Botswana, Malawi and Zambia continued to support the self-regulatory institutions that they helped to establish. Worrying trends developed in South Africa with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) resolving at its 2007 convention to introduce a statutory media tribunal. The Namibian government also announced its intention to establish a statutory media council. In Zambia, despite the existence of the self-regulatory Media Council of Zambia (MECOZ), the government is linking the passing of the Freedom of Information Bill to self-regulation, insisting that all media in the country must be part of MECOZ, or a compulsory statutory body will be established. Zambia’s case is unique in that all media houses and bodies belong to MECOZ except the biggest independent newspaper, The Post. Media bodies in Zambia, including the MISA chapter, continue campaigning for the government to view media bodies and the bill as separate issues. MISA helped to launch the Namibian Editors’ Forum in the hope that it will assist with the establishment of a selfregulatory mechanism in that country. Attempts to do so in the past have been hindered by the country’s highly polarised media fraternity. With MISA’s support, the Namibia Editors’ Forum is working towards establishing a selfregulatory mechanism and both organisations are in talks with government not to establish a statutory body. MISA’s draft code of ethics has been transformed into a set of guiding principles after receiving feedback. This was done because most of the chapters already have a code of ethics in place. Therefore, guiding principles were put in place to help the chapters still in need of a code. Media awards MISA continued to award excellence in journalism in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The year 2007 saw MISA split the John Manyarara Investigative Journalism Award into two awards: Investigative Journalist of the Year and Upcoming Investigative Journalist of the Year. Guns for Sale by Jessica Pitchford of the SABC’s Special Assignment team and Food for Sale in Prisons by Pilirani Phiri of Zodiak Radio in Malawi won the respective awards. The MISA Press Freedom award went to Aleke Banda, a veteran Malawian journalist and owner of one of Malawi’s largest independent newspaper chains that comprises The Nation, The Weekend Nation and The Nation on Sunday. A substantial increase in the number of entries for both awards compared to the previous year indicates that they are growing in popularity. National awards, too, continued to gain popularity with all the chapters that held these events registering an increase in entries, while Botswana attracted the country’s president as the keynote speaker. Namibia attracted an international team of judges and Malawi received excellent coverage of their award-giving ceremony. National awards were held in Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania and Zambia. Gender and HIV and AIDS Bridging the gap to ensure gender balance and equality in and through the media continues to be on the agenda and slowly but surely the issues of gender and HIV and AIDS are being discussed, awareness is being raised and 30 Annual Report 2008