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Lies, damned lies and media development
False facts are a problem everywhere; In developing countries, they’re devastating Accusations of inaccuracies in the news media are nothing new. After all, American journalism went through its infamous “yellow” period at the end of the 19th century when invented stories helped drive the US to... |
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Africa Summit 2014: Recommendations for the Medi...
Yesterday, we offered a behind-the-scenes look at what representatives of the media sector in Africa saw as the greatest challenges facing the region’s media development. Today, that group met in Washington to make recommendations on how to combat these challenges. The panel’s spokespers... |
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Africa Summit 2014: Challenges to the Media Sect...
In the midst of the US-Africa Summit taking place for the government leaders in Washington, DC this week, civil society and media groups met at the National Endowment for Democracy to create a specific set of recommendations and goals for the region’s development. While broad facets of civil... |
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Russia’s Citizen Journalists
Citizen journalists played a key role in discovering evidence related to the recent Malaysia Airlines plane crash in Ukraine. Sleuths posted images of what was purported to be a missile launcher near the crash site, and fellow netizens tracked down corroborating images and information. Similar insta... |
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Soft Power on the Air: The News with a Russian T...
When the Malaysia Airlines plane crashed in eastern Ukraine last week, the Russian state media began to spread obvious disinformation and anti-Ukraine propaganda. With fabricated witnesses and unlikely hypotheses, consumers of Russian media received a disturbingly false picture of this international... |
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Treading Softly: Soft Censorship in Russia
Only a few brave souls will continue to produce objective, high-quality news when they have many incentives not to do so. Independent news sources in Russia face increasingly higher risks of litigation, verbal attacks by government news sources, or shutdown. Journalists must practice self-censorship... |
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The Domestic Scene of Russian Media: TV is King
The Russian government has depended heavily on the state media to mobilize necessary domestic support in the wake of its seizure of the Crimean peninsula earlier this year. With the number of independent media sources in Russia shrinking and the state-owned broadcasting networks expanding their reac... |
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Citizen Participation and Technology: An NDI Stu...
After the Arab Spring, technology became the panacea for democratic development issues. Many programs focus on using technology to engage citizens and to spread information, but how effective are these tools at promoting democracy? Representatives from the National Democratic Institute (NDI) visited... |
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Yes, media freedoms can be measured
The real question is who holds the yardstick If you hang around the halls of United Nations and World Bank long enough, you’re sure to encounter the old saw that goes something like this: “We have nothing against setting targets, but things like governance and press freedom just can’t be measu... |
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Metrics in Journalism Evaluation: Can they benef...
Guest post by Amanda Wilson of UPI Next There are some basic journalism standards – accuracy, balance, good storytelling – that are sacrosanct to journalists across the world. That is the idea behind diverse attempts to create tools for evaluating journalism content produced in newsrooms or ... |