It is not true that community broadcasting enjoys special promotion in order to ensure that poor and rural communities have access to a broad range of sources of information. As a result, due to lack of support, the sector is facing enormous difficulties, thus being unable to achieve its main objectives. State advertising, because of its nature as a public service, could make a big difference if the state took a deliberate policy of making that advertising available to community radio stations. That is why specific legislation on community broadcasting is of extreme necessity. SCORES: Individual scores: 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1 Average score: 1.4 2.6 The editorial independence of print media published by a public authority is protected adequately against undue political interference. ANALYSIS: Officially, independence of the media is guaranteed, even for the public sector media. There is very little, if any state interference in the public sector media. However, there has been a noticeable effort on the part of editors in the public sector media not to do anything that could upset government, even if no one asks them to do so. As a result, many public sector media journalists have sought to deal with less controversial issues, as a way of protecting themselves from the frustrations that they would have to endure as a result of the pressure that they would have to face from their own bosses. Individual scores: 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 Average score: 5.0 2.7 Independent news agencies gather and distribute information for all media. ANALYSIS: The only news agency in Cape Verde is the state-owned INFORPRESS, which for many years has had the role of disseminating information about developments in the different islands, the Diaspora and the rest of the world. But INFORPRESS operates with some deficiency, and as such has not been able to fulfil its mandate as an important vehicle for information in an insular country with a large Diaspora. It functions irregularly, and as a result no one buys its services. There was unanimity amongst the participants that the failure of INFORPRESS is partly responsible for the weak performance of the media in general, in as far as gathering of news is concerned. Their argument was that although INFORPRESS has correspondents throughout the country, its dysfunctional status means that it cannot feed on to other media, which do not have the same 31