SECTOR 4 4.6 Owners of established mainstream private media do not interfere with editorial independence. Media owners who are not professional journalists tend to interfere often with editorial independence. It did, for example, happen that an owner arrived at his press body at 11pm in order to request that articles be changed, even though the paper had been signed off already: employees had no other choice but to comply. Another one asked his bodyguards to beat up a journalist in the editorial office on the grounds that this journalist had published an article, which wasn’t good for his business. There are, however, media bosses who are beyond reproach of any interference but they are few in numbers. Scores: Individual scores: 1 Country does not meet indicator 2 Country meets only a few aspects of indicator 3 Country meets some aspects of indicator 4 Country meets most aspects of indicator 5 Country meets all aspects of the indicator Average score: 1.8 4.7 Journalists and media houses have integrity and are not corrupt. A campaign against “brown envelope journalism”, which is how the corruption of journalists is referred to, was organised in 2005. This practise consists in “bolstering” information by means of a few bank notes. Some refer to it as “transport or rescue”. This practise bothers some editorial offices a lot given the delay it causes in submitting articles reporters are busy writing. A reporter dispatched to cover an event might return 5 hours later, having had to wait for the notorious “transport”. Some editorial offices have had to ask their reporters to send parts of their copy via SMS while waiting for the entire article in order to be able to start with the layout. 116 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER Democratic Republic of Congo