SECTOR 4 The media practice high levels of professional standards. 4.1 The media follow voluntary codes of professional standards, which are enforced by self–regulatory bodies that deal with complaints from the public. Namibia now has a Media Ombudsman – a position established by the Editors Forum of Namibia (EFN) in 2009 as a self-regulation mechanism. The public can complain to the Ombudsman about the media’s coverage and can hold the media accountable without having to go to court which is prohibitively expensive for most people. The Media Ombudsman makes rulings according to a code of ethics that the media sign on to and apply voluntarily. However some media houses do not appear to be following the code. “Informanté has practiced very unethical journalism that didn’t seem to be regulated in any way by anyone,” a panellist noted. Another panellist pointed out, however, that a DJ at Radio Wave was held accountable for a flippant comment made on air, suggesting that an ethics code was applied in that situation. In his first year in the post, the Media Ombudsman handled 17 complaints. Most were about inaccuracies in reporting and both sides of a story not being adequately presented. When a complaint is made, first there is informal mediation, during which most complaints are resolved. Some complaints were withdrawn once the complainant received explanation from the media house concerned. In other cases, the media house issued an apology. In one case, Informanté initially refused to apologise. When, eventually, the newspaper’s editor Max Hamata agreed to publish an apology, he did not give the apology the same prominence as the offending article. Only then did the newspaper’s owners get involved. They felt the complaint should have been made to them in the first place, as opposed to the editor, and a second, more prominent apology was duly published. Awareness of the Media Ombudsman is growing among journalists and the public alike. A series of road shows and radio appearances promoting the Media Ombudsman have been planned for this year (2011). Last year, a television advert was broadcast, and this generated a lot of discussion. The Media Ombudsman now has a web site on which people can lodge their complaints. 54 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER NAMIBIA 2011