STATE OF THE MEDIA REPORT QUARTER 3. 2020 public and should be willing to be held accountable for their actions and/or inaction. Picture courtesy of The Judiciary of Zambia Likewise, media houses must also be willing to be held accountable for their publications and this must be done through the due process of the law such as through the courts of law. The danger of such litigation, however, is the resultant chilling effect, particularly that presented by defamation law suits22. ACCESS TO INFORMATION BILL During the quarter under review, there was no progress recorded on the enactment of the Access to Information Bill, a situation which indicates no change from the previous quarter in which no pronouncements were recorded either. The ATI Bill has stalled since it was first mooted in the early 2002 with several pronouncements made by different regimes but all in vain 23. It is saddening that another session of the National Assembly elapsed in the quarter without enactment of the Bill despite nearly two decades of lobbying and advocacy. Further, history is about to repeat itself as another term of office comes to end and election campaigns begin, with study on the Defamation of the President and the law’s effect on media performance in Zambia. See http://dspace.unza.zm/handle/123456789/5545 22 According to findings by Chris Dent and Andrew Kenyon in a study on defamation law’s chilling effect. See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/22819 1802_Defamation_Law's_Chilling_Effect_A_Comp arative_Content_Analysis_of_Australian_and_US_ Newspapers. Similar findings were recorded in a 23 Some of the pronouncements recorded since 2011 are archived at https://zambiareports.com/2018/05/04/sevenyears-story-information-bill/ 24