interest into account and are largely made up of marches in support of the Head of State and his meetings. Nevertheless the programmes of the second public channel and the public radio stations do offer more variety. The ORTB is underfinanced. It produces its own financial resources from advertising. Despite the existence of a code of ethics for journalists, applied by a self-regulatory body, the ODEM (Observatoire de la déontologie et de l’éthique dans les medias – Professional Practices and Media Ethics Observatory), processing of information, particularly of a political and social nature, remains very indifferent. Self-censorship is practised for political and economic reasons. Most media managers, in order to survive, sign non-aggression agreements with companies, Government or even political leaders. The media do not cover all topics and investigative journalism is not sufficiently entrenched. Newsrooms are not well equipped to encourage their staff to specialize. Benin has a National School of Information and Communications Science and Technique (École Nationale des Sciences et Techniques de l’Information et de la Communication); there are also private training centres, but the qualifications they issue are dubious. Women are not given a fair and adequate voice in the media. However, the media do reflect the voices of minorities and society in its ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity. With regard to the promotion of skills in the media, no discrimination can be reported on the grounds of race, ethnic origin, social group, gender, religion, disability or age. Salary levels are not satisfactory in the private media, despite the collective agreement in force since 2008, setting the minimum salary of a journalist at 60,000 CFA francs (120 US dollars). In the public sector salaries and wages are considerably higher. Media professionals are organized into trade unions and employers’ associations. But these organisations are not effective in representing the interests of their members. 62 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER BENIN 2014