Media Monitoring: South Africa gives Rwanda a helping hand

However, establishing a media monitoring culture or institution is not a ‘cheap’ exercise, given all sorts of implications – social, economic, ethical and political – that surround the whole process.

In many African countries, where media freedom is taboo, media monitoring organisations are virtually nonexistent. But where there is one, critics and independent analysts unanimously agree that the institution’s practices are not only flawed and biased, but also lack credibility. The critics reason that in many cases the government’s ‘spies’ and ‘spin-doctors’ manipulate the organisation’s activities and use media monitoring to score political points.

Wary of this and its consequences, many African independent media practitioners are now looking to South Africa – Africa’s economic powerhouse and a model of media freedom in Africa – to help.

Sandra Roberts, project co-ordinator of the SA Media Monitoring Project (MMP), told Bizcommunity.com: “The MMP is open to working with various [African] organisations interested in the media. We work with them on the basis of human rights, including freedom of the media, encouraging them to embrace human rights standards and use them as a benchmark for media performance.”

Roberts and her colleague Patrice Mulama, who travelled to Rwanda in December last year to share media monitoring experiences with the monitors of the Rwandan Media Monitoring Project (RMMP), brought home a set of emotive and interesting experiences.

The RMMP falls under the High Council of the Press (HCP) and was established in 2003 to monitor media coverage of that year’s elections in Rwanda.

Rwanda, a small, landlocked Central African country, has one of the most troubled pasts of any country. The world stood by as close to one million people, mainly Tutsis, were massacred by Hutus in April 1994.

“We have been working with the RMMT for a number of years now,” Roberts said. “In discussion with monitors, it seems that they face many of the issues we face here, but more issues are related to a lack of media professionalism and good analytical journalism, in that journalists’ output lacks credibility. This is not due to a lack of will, but possibly to limited capacity.”

She noted an interesting fact about the Rwandan media, however: “One thing that their media does is to commemorate the genocide every year,” she said. “They educate the people about their history. I think that they are ahead of SA media in that way, which do not take opportunities to discuss our history, and we have the need to learn because media freedom was absent during apartheid.”

Both the SA MMP and HCP jointly developed a new draft code that is based on best practice African and international codes and which was finalised and adopted in 2005 and signed by over 300 Rwandan media practitioners.

So many things have changed since the SA MMP entered into a working partnership with the HCP/RMMP, Roberts noted. “There seems to be a vast improvement in the area of press freedom,” she remarked.

“By ensuring the media is involved in self-regulation, issues of press freedom are addressed while ethical standards are upheld. However, the balance between the issues of freedom and ethical practice is difficult to maintain, particularly in the comparatively smaller media sector in Rwanda, whose history has been severely tainted by the genocide.

“The government is also not under obligation to take on board the recommendations of the HCP, whenever the latter tries to protect press freedom,” Roberts concluded.

But, given that Rwanda is ranked a distant 129th in the 2006 Worldwide Press Freedom Index, just 11 and 13 places ahead of Zimbabwe (140th) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (142nd) respectively, many observers wonder what kind of press freedom the HCP is trying to protect and promote.

As the aggressive attitude of many African politicians towards freedom of expression goes on unabated, critics still have their reservations. They say that despite South Africa’s willingness to help its fellow African countries establish a culture of good governance and respect for human rights, free-thinking and independent voices in Africa remain under threat.

For more information, visit www.mediamonitoring.org.za