CHAPTER 4: AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER THEMATIC TRENDS: 2011-2021 This setup provides the government indirect influence over broadcasting content as it is possible for the NCA to grant licences only to broadcasters considered politically correct and pliable. In another example, the Benin Broadcasting Authority (ORTB) is under powerful political influence from the Presidency of Benin, particularly the television division (2021 AMB for Benin). In Ethiopia, state-owned media continue to report the narrative provided by the government and follow the official line in their coverage of events and issues affecting political authorities (2019 AMB for Ethiopia). The media regulatory body of Mali (2016 AMB for Mali), the Supreme Communication Authority, is under political influence as three of its nine members are appointed directly by the President of the Republic, and the president of the institution is one of those three. In addition, the Independent Media Council of Uganda’s independence is compromised, given that its head is a presidential advisor. On the other extreme, despite the Namibian government’s potential to control the regulatory body, the Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (CRAN), it remains mainly professional. Recommendations regarding the regulation of broadcasting focus on the need to harmonise related communications services, prevent anti-competition tendencies and promote the independence of regulatory bodies. 4.5 The commercial imperative and communicative space The AMBs also highlight that private commercial media are generally less accessible and responsive to marginalised communities because they are motivated by profit. Despite the massively plural and fairly diverse media in South Africa, narratives about people from peri-urban and rural areas are largely neglected by news media. Likewise, South Africa’s poorly-funded public media, primarily the broadcast media, seem to retreat from the public service mandate and focus on urban populations, although their content is diverse. The 2018 AMB for Botswana notes that “newspapers are almost exclusively available in English and urban areas, with their accessibility to the wider public outside these domains limited”. The desire to minimise costs and maximise profits seems to be the forerunner of elitist journalism; corruption in journalism; unethical journalism (discussed below); and the neglect of investigative journalism, which 17 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER 11 YEARS IN REVIEW