Media support partnerships – in brief
More than 30 media support organisations across the world are pooling their efforts in an attempt to identify the forms of assistance most useful in strengthening local media and press freedom in countries in need of media support
The aim is to improve cooperation and coordination between international, national and local media support organisations to increase the positive impact of activities on the media environment in countries with weak press freedom records. Although partnerships amongst media support organisations is not a new phenomenon, the organisations have recognised that a more focussed and strategic partnership approach is needed to meet the challenges facing media and press freedom.
Read about the progress so far in the two reports from the Copenhagen and New York partnership meetings in 2009 and 2010.
Defining partnerships
Since September 2009, the organisations have actively come together to identify three types of media support partnerships wwhich focus on different activities, but in practice overlap:
Advocacy partnership: lobbying national or third-party governments or multilateral bodies on topics such as improving press freedom, the safety of journalists or appealing for other action in favour of media
Media development partnership: Focusses on activities which build up the media sector over a longer timeframe. The training of journalists and editors, as well as the drafting of media policies fall into this category.
Emergency Partnership: provides rapid and flexible support to a media community following conflicts or natural disasters. Actions of the partnership include disaster mitigation, dissemination of humanitarian information and the training of journalists on how to cover conflicts and disasters.
Partnership process so far
Over the years, several joint missions to countries with serious human rights and press freedom breaches such as Sri Lanka and Azerbaijan have been carried out involving representatives from various media support organisations. However, although mostly successful, such partnership missions have been ad hoc at best, lacking an overall strategic partnership approach.
The first Partnership meeting in Copenhagen in September 2009 was an opportunity for media support organisations to “compare notes” on their individual and joint media support activities around the world. In January 2010, the organisations met again in a practical exercise of selecting and devising action plans for media support partnerships in 2010 in 14 countries across four continents. These 14 country partnerships were the main item of analysis and evaluation at UNESCO in Paris from 21 – 23 November 2010.
The organisations will continue to meet every second year, but smaller groups will meet more frequently in the regions where partnership activities are currently taking place.
