State of the media in Southern Africa - 2003 ists and to MISA (or new vigour in pursuing them). These include the increase of civil defamation cases against the media and concerns about the high financial penalties being awarded to successful litigants, the emergence of more independent media councils (voluntary media complaints bodies) or attempts to do so, the establishment of national editors forums, increasing concerns about the wages and working conditions of journalists, the struggle for the appointment of statutory but independent broadcasting authorities, developments around the introduction of Access to Information legislation, and the rise of media civil society coalitions (including associations of journalists in the state owned media) for media freedom advocacy and legal reform purposes. All of these issues have a direct bearing on media freedom and the quality of journalism in the SADC region. Underlying this is a remarkable shift in MISA from its earlier years after its establishment in 1992 when it largely contained itself to press freedom issues in the print media and focused on assisting journalists and the media in the severely oppressed privately owned media sector. The pursuit of pluralism and independence in the broadcasting sector has finally come of an age. Many more practitioners from the state owned media are now involved in MISA’s affairs, some as office bearers and others through the civil society coalitions that MISA are developing with them. 1 Media under Siege: Report on media coverage of the 2002 Presidential and Mayoral elections in Zimbabwe. Published by the Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe. p.111 So This Is Democracy? 2003 11 Media Institute of Southern Africa