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. The Media Council of Tanzania (MCT) has published a code of conduct for the media, which has been endorsed by all the media houses, print and broadcasting, in the country. Panellists said it was questionable whether most media practitioners actually subscribe to it. Mention was made of a study by St Augustine University of Tanzania which indicated that most media houses do not observe this code of conduct. Most media houses also have their own code of ethics, but these are silent when it comes to the handling of complaints. The MCT has an ethics committee which handles complaints from members of the public with regard to how they have been represented in the media. Within the last two years, all the complaints have been about newspapers from the New Habari Corporation stable (a private media entity), and are mostly lodged by politicians or former politicians. In each case, the newspapers were found to have erred and were asked by the MCT to apologise, which they did, in print. “The MCT enjoys the support of the media houses in Tanzania. Generally, the rate of compliance with MCT directives is 95 per cent.” Some cases do not go all the way to the ethics committee but are sorted out at the MCT secretariat level. If media houses refuse to comply after being found to have erred by the MCT ethics committee, the MCT advises complainants to take the case to court. During the period under review (2010-2012) MCT handled several arbitration and mediation complaints against the media. In 2010 the MCT received and processed sixteen complaints against the media from the public. In 2011 there were seventeen cases and in 2012 the Council received 14 complaints. Some of these complaints were handled by the Council’s Secretariat where the parties were given advice and the media outlets mostly newspapers published apologies. Very few cases were handled by the Council’s ethics committee chaired by a retired High Court Judge. In 2012 the committee handled three high profile cases involving former Prime Minister Frederick Sumaye in which the newspaper which he had complained against apologised. Another was that of former cabinet minister Mohamed Seif Khatibu. The newspaper also complied with the committee’s decision and apologised. One rogue editor refused to comply with the Ethics committee’s decision in a complaint raised by a Permanent Secretary 50 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER TANZANIA 2012