SECTOR 4 4.4 Journalists and other media practitioners are organised in trade unions and/or professional associations, which effectively represent their interests. There are 11 trade unions in the public media: four are at RTI, four are at Fraternite Matin, three at l’AIP. SYNAPPCI (the National Union of Press Professionals of Côte d’Ivoire) is the only union of national stature. Currently, the stakeholders are busy putting in place a strong inter-union. According to the panel, the difficulty is to avoid, especially in public, that unions become defence mechanisms of managing directors. Côte d’Ivoire also has organisations that defend the rights and interests of journalists. There is, for example, UNJCI (National Union of Journalists of Côte d’Ivoire); but other groups have also come into existence. Panellists felt that journalists are too divided to defend their own interests. Besides the unions and associations, there are small sectorial groups such as: “association of journalists of PDCI”, “association of volunteer communicators”, “association of journalists for emergence”, etc. 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: 3.1 (2012 = 3.6, 2009 = 5.0) 4.5 Journalists and media houses have integrity and are not corrupt. Despite efforts to apply the collective agreement since January 2015, corruption continues to exist. In order to cover events, journalists continue to demand an amount of 10.000 FCFA (USD 17) that they often take without writing anything. The practice of the remittance of per diems is so widespread that some journalists give their share to the bosses who stay behind at the office. In fact, Ministers have budgets to pay for the transport of journalists when they go to report in the ministries. One panellist noted that “personalities have their journalists, in the same way that they have their physicians.” AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER Côte d’Ivoire 2016 105