SECTOR 2

The media landscape, including new
media, is characterised by diversity,
independence and sustainability.
2.1 A wide range of sources of information (print,
broadcasting, internet, mobile phones) is accessible
and affordable to citizens.
Print
Other than the entry of 3 new print media publications - a Sunday paper called
The Patriot, The Monday Times tabloid and The Business Weekly and Review, very
little has changed on the media landscape since the last AMB report in 2011.
The only official figures available for print media date back to 2009 when the
Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) released their last print circulation figures.
The state-owned Daily News and privately owned Mmegi continue as the only
two daily newspapers.
There are 13 private weekly newspapers in Botswana – The Botswana Gazette,
Botswana Guardian, Echo, Midweek Sun, The Mirror, (out of publication), Monitor,
Ngami Times, Sunday Standard, Sunday Tribune (out of publication), The Voice
and the three new entrants (in the past two years): the Global Post (in Chinese
and English), the Weekend Post and the Telegraph. Most of these newspapers
are national, while others are limited to specific locations. The newspapers have
circulations ranging between 8,000 (Sunday Tribune) and 30,000 (The Voice).
Most of these newspapers are not widely distributed in the rural areas and 6070% of sales of these papers are within 100km of Gaborone, so their readership
is based mainly in the urban areas.
“There is this idea that people living in the villages are almost in a different
country to people in urban areas, in the way that information is circulated. There
could be a constitutional case and they would know nothing about it, even from
the radio. That is the disparity between the two - the difference in media and type
of information consumed in the different parts of the country. So there’s limited
reach of these types of media.”
The Daily News is free and readily available because the government wants it
to reach all citizens. “The Daily News is distributed in communities but I think
sometimes it gets there too late; they are dropped in the major centres and then
get distributed further. In terms of circulation, they are the most widely circulated
paper; they have offices almost everywhere. However, they also claim to be

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AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER Botswana 2014

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