SECTOR 2 2.1 A wide range of sources of information (print, broadcasting, internet, mobile phones) is accessible and affordable to citizens Print Media There are no daily newspapers in Lesotho. However, there are a number of weekly newspapers, including: • Public Eye • Lesotho Times • Sunday Express • Lesotho Today (The only state-owned newspaper. It was closed in 2015 and re-opened in September 2018.) • Moeletsi-oa-Basotho • News Day • The Nation • The Informative • The Post • Maseru Metro The average cost of these newspapers is between 5-10 M (1 to 1.50 USD) and all of them are urban-based (in retail shops, newspapers sell for 6 M (40 US cents), but street vendors sell for as high as 10 M (1 USD)). For context, a loaf of bread is about 10 M (1 USD) and public transport is 7.50 M (50 US cents). Generally, newspapers are considered affordable but not accessible to rural and peri-urban populations. One panellist stated that ‘the fact that the printrun of most of these weeklies is between 3,000 and 5,000 copies means that newspapers are not affordable, hence the decision to reduce the print numbers’. However, another panellist commented, ‘Newspapers are affordable for the people they are written for.’ Newspapers are also competing with radio, which is more accessible and affordable. For the greater part of the population, the preferred media is radio – whether in English or in the local vernacular. Furthermore, the language in which most newspapers are written in hampers their accessibility. Newspapers are written in English and are thus not understandable to many rural people. Lesotho also suffers from distribution problems as the country is mountainous, making it difficult for newspapers to travel beyond the urban centres. 22 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER LESOTHO 2018