these meetings media practitioners have drawn up an extensive list of support needs that the chapter endeavours to address. African Media Barometer At the end of 2006 MISA and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) completed the first round of African Media Barometer (AMB) surveys in the 11 SADC countries where MISA is active The AMB is an assessment tool of the national media environments. A collective panel of media and civil society representatives assess their national environments according to 42 defined indicators. The benchmarks used are largely based on the African Commission for Human and People’s Rights’ Declaration of Principles of Freedom of Expression, adopted in 2002. Not surprisingly, the Zimbabwe panellists reported on the “fear factor”: “The fear factor is always there - and it is increasing, particularly in the public sphere. Government is determined, to the point of obsession, to increasingly control what people say and do … If Zimbabweans say something outside the country presumed to be critical of government, the net could be closing in on them and their passport may be seized.” South Africans are expressing themselves freely – or so we assume. The revelation in the South African AMB report that there are powerful pockets of fear regarding freedom of expression was, therefore, quite an eye-opener. It concludes that such fear results in self-censorship for fear of being labelled, isolated or cut off from resources. None of the countries under review have a media landscape that rated as predominantly free and independent. In southern Africa, South Africa came closest to this standard. For the rest, a lack of confidence prevails in the national broadcasters, and their relevance in the promotion of participatory development and democratisation. National and regional campaigns for broadcasting reform should, therefore, be prioritised. All AMB reports are available online at http://www.misa.org/mediabarometer.html Online Media Freedom Monitoring Tool In 2005 the programme made substantial progress towards standardising the monitoring and reporting mechanisms through designing the Online Media Freedom Monitoring Tool (http://www.freemedia.misa.org/). The project, which is being developed in several phases, aims to improve MISA’s media freedom monitoring capacity. In addition to standardised submission, easy retrieval and search of the alerts, the content management system creates a database that will include value-adding resource documents and data that provide necessary evidence for media freedom analysis. It is foreseen that the final phase of this project will be completed late in 2007 and launched when the organisation unveils its revamped website. Outreach, networking and coalition building The International Freedom of Expression Exchange The International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) is a network of 87 freedom of expression organisations that monitors the state of free expression and transmits the information it collects to individuals and organisations Annual Report 2007 23