EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The highlight of this quarter was the milestone reached on June 17, 2015, when the country successfully managed to migrate from analogue to digital broadcasting. The journey to this point has not been easy and in the past, government has had to postpone the migration date. Although it is only Phase 1 of the migration, it is nonetheless a great achievement despite the several challenges faced. While we celebrate a milestone in television broadcasting, the same cannot be said of the Access to Information (ATI) Bill. It was hoped that by now, this bill would have been enacted. But we see in this quarter that the process seems to have stalled with pronouncements from both the Minister of Information and Broadcasting and the republican President saying that government was having second thoughts on the enactment of the bill. There have been a lot of misgivings from the media and stakeholders over these pronouncements and it is hoped that the process will soon get back on track as this was one of the flagship election promises from the Patriotic Front (PF) in its 2011 campaign. As has come to be expected, new Ministers at the Ministry almost always fire senior management of public media organisations and hire their own preferred staff. In this quarter we wee the entire boards of Zambia Daily Mail and The Times of Zambia being fired just before their mandate came to an end. These boards have not yet been replaced. A new managing director was also appointed at the Times of Zambia, a clear vindication of the call to ensure that public media are allowed their operational independence without fear of dismissal, owing to the direct state control. The election media monitoring report was also launched and this provides key learning points for media houses to learn from and improve their services as we go into another election next year. The report indicates that the coverage of the January 20 th election focused on personalities and not issues while certain groups of society, such as women received marginalized coverage. The Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services announced that no government agency would be allowed to place adverts in the public media on credit. He also instructed the Ministry of Finance to assist public media to recover their debts from government. This is definitely a welcome move as public media have been having financial challenges further weakening their independence and sustainability as they have to depend on government for grants. Amongst the topical issues that occurred in the quarter include The Post Newspaper winning a defamation case against freelance journalist Chanda Chimba and being awarded damages totaling K5 billion. This judgment has a chilling effect on the freedom 6