REGIONAL MEDIA FREEDOM MONITORING Regional Programme Goal Establishment of a region where there are no media freedom violations and the media operates freely without political, commercial and economic interference • Time-efficient and effective identification, analysis and exposure of each violation of media freedom and right to information in the 11 SADC countries Regional Programme • SADC Journalists under Fire campaign objective: To expose the persecution of journalists in the SADC region, provide Objectives practical support to victims and advocate for an enabling environment for media freedom and freedom of expression PERFORMANCE INDICATORS REGIONAL OBJECTIVE MAJOR ACTIVITIES REMARK/COMMENTS (ACTUAL/ACHIEVED) 2. Training activity to establish 2.1 Conduct training for information and • Training workshop took place in Cape The training activity took place in Cape monit oring guidelines and more effective advocacy officers Town, South Africa, from May 12 to Town from May 12 to 15, 2003, and dissemination of action alerts; Implement 2.2 Preparation of training materials: 15, 2003 incorporated both MISA Information a standardised system of reporting on guidelines on media monitoring; • Ongoing production and dissemination Officers and Advocacy Officers. Two sets media freedom violations resource materials on freedom of of media freedom alerts of booklets were produced, ie. a t raining expression and reference manual for MISA • Botswana 2.3 Logistics Information Officers (Writing • Advocacy • Lesotho 2.4 Source relevant trainers • Lobbying) and a resource guide on • Malawi media freedom and freedom of • Mozambique expression with guidelines on human • Namibia rights/media freedom monitoring. • South Africa The varied skills levels of information officers make it difficult to devise relevant • Swaziland • Tanzania training activities. Despite the training, there are still major • Zambia • Zimbabwe deviations from a standardised alerts format. The program manager is also concerned that information officers have become national implementing officers for all other programmes and as such do not spend sufficient time on improving national media monitoring activities or on implementing the SADC Journalists Under Fire campaign. In order to further capacitate information officers, the regional secretariat recognises the need to develop basic policy documents. Another attempt to standardise reporting methods is being developed through an online web-based interface. The latter two activities will, however, only be undertaken in 2004. MISA Annual Report (April 2003 – March 2004) 48