SECTOR 4 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: 2.4 (2005 = 3.6; 2007 = 4.3; 2009 = 2.6; 2011 = 1.3) 4.5 Journalists and media houses have integrity and are not corrupt. Corruption in sports journalism is rife and major sponsors of sporting events nurture unethical behaviour by offering bribes in the form of money and positions. “I was in the soccer industry for a while when I realised that at every newspaper and every radio station there is a journalist who has been given money.” “I remember that there was going to be a change of leadership in the Botswana Football Association (BFA), and journalists were promised positions... For some of them it didn’t materialise so now they’ve changed their stories. “I also did a lot of investigation on how Qatar won the 2022 World Cup and at the same time I was looking for top investigative journalists in the soccer industry, so I met with a lot of stakeholders in Botswana. They would tell me: ‘you can’t deal with that person because I gave him that’ and then they showed me SMSes to prove it. I know of some journalists who couldn’t afford prostitutes and some of these guys paid for them.” As more large corporations sponsor media awards, more journalists are focusing on writing stories they think will win them favour. “The Coca-Cola Awards are for articles about the Coca-Cola Cup... Sometimes these awards pay bigger than the National Media Awards. So you get these reporters who are really obsessed with covering the Coca-Cola Cup for example. They’re at every press conference, they record everything, and they want to be there, take pictures.” Mobile phone companies are notorious for presenting media practitioners with free airtime and the latest mobile phones “for review purposes” and “in return”, 56 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER Botswana 2014