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Assessing the Media Development Challenge in the...
As over 40 media experts settled into the sunny conference room in Beirut, casual exchanges hinted at the breadth of challenges they had assembled to discuss. Some were absent, waylaid at border crossings; some would arrive late bearing news from election observation efforts in Tunisia. The room was... |
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Information Laundering and Globalized Media R...
By Noah Arjomand In May 2018, A Washington Post fact-check of the US government’s reasons for withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran included a discussion of the claim that Iranian military spending had increased because of the agreement. The fact-checkers wrote: Iran’... |
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Information Laundering and Globalized Media R...
By Noah Arjomand Money laundering is a familiar story: “dirty money” generated through illicit means must be “cleaned” through a series of phony transactions that make its sourcing appear legitimate before that money enters into a financial system undetected. The complexity, interconnectedne... |
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When Media Capture Backfires: Local Elections an...
Duygu Güvenç and Jérémie Langlois Turkey captivated the world’s attention recently as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s seemingly unstoppable accumulation of power ground to a halt in a series of humiliating defeats in local elections. To the surprise of many, digital news media emerged as a... |
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A Road-map for Meaningful Media Reform in Ethiop...
By Asmamaw Gizaw The rapid political opening in Ethiopia over the past year has seen an uptick in journalistic freedom and a sincere effort on the part of the government to foster a robust, independent, and diverse media sphere. To continue this progress, reforms efforts must work to undo the legaci... |
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Social Media Taxes: A Financial Barrier for Inde...
With press freedom and freedom of speech increasingly under attack, social media is often the last space in many countries for independent voices. This has been especially true in countries where governments are openly hostile to news organizations. More recently, however, many governments have begu... |
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Decline in attacks masks a deeper challenge for ...
In Pakistan, press freedom has ticked up amid a decline in attacks on journalists over the past year, but recent reports suggest the promising numbers mask a deeper challenge of self-censorship. One recent study by Media Matters for Democracy found that roughly 88 percent of Pakistani journalists ad... |
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Ethiopia is Unshackling the Media, but True Inde...
By Henok Fente Just a few months ago, Ethiopia was one of the countries with the highest number of imprisoned and exiled journalists. Now, a new prime minister is promising that his government will respect freedom of speech as part of a swift move toward democracy. “Building democratic institutio... |
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Who watches the watchdog? Why media ownership co...
When a small group of political or economic elites controls the mass media, they effectively monopolize the channels through which information circulates in society. In this way they can play an outsized role in shaping what gets covered by journalists and how it is covered. In the worst cases, they... |
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Defending Digital Rights in the Democratic Repub...
By Morgan Frost While the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the fourth largest country in Africa in terms of population, it has one of the lowest levels of internet accessibility across the continent. Weak democratic governance and the prevalence of several armed groups has left the DRC to f... |