Various projects and activities were undertaken under Programme D: Media Support. On the issue of self-regulation, National chapters in Botswana and Namibia managed to assist the media to agree codes of ethics and establishing a media council and Ombudsman respectively. The media council in Tanzania continues to operate while efforts to impose statutory ones were opposed without success in Zimbabwe. Various national chapters undertook training programmes as requested by their members. The MISANet News Exchange continued to operate though with reduced contributions. MISA Zimbabwe launched its Legal Defence Fund which contributed funding for the defence of most the journalists charged under the new draconian laws enacted early 2002. MISA continued to publish its quarterly Free Press magazine during the year and the annual report and State of the media report “So this is Democracy?”. MISA, in collaboration with its partner, Gender Links, coordinated the first ever regional Gender and Media Baseline Study which was done in 12 countries of SADC during the month of November 2002. The report was launched on March 8, International Women’s Day. Implementation and monitoring of the strategic plan was rather slow due to external and internal factors. Externally, it took some time for some the donors to release the funds which delayed the disbursements of funds to the national chapters for them to implement programmes. Internal, appointment of staff and orientation to advocacy was very slow with the Advocacy Training of programme staff and managers only taking place in June 2003. The MISA Media Advocacy Toolkit was produced was used to do the training which was also attended by other Trainers who are expected to undertake advocacy training in all the 10 SADC countries where is currently operating. Training of information officers, however, continued, resulting in more investigation and reporting of media freedom violations. 4