Drawing from local examples, a new report entitled Soft Censorship: How Governments around the Globe Use Money to Manipulate Media provides a global perspective on a transparency issue that is likely to continue despite changes in the media industry.
Globally, the traditional print media industry is declining. With the rise of new forms of media, print media no longer maintains the public prominence or the financial stability it once enjoyed. Despite this shift in the media industry, the long-standing issue of governments’ use of advertising buys to influence print media coverage continues to be prevalent across the globe.
Yesterday, the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) (a project of the National Endowment for Democracy) held a panel discussion on its report on soft censorship, researched and written by former journalist Don Podesta. The report, Soft Censorship: How Governments around the Globe Use Money to Manipulate Media, presents a series of national case studies where government advertising has been used to undermine the independence of media outlets or shape coverage.
One example details Argentina’s ruling political party’s placement of government advertising only in regional papers who demonstrated support for Cristina Kirchner’s campaign to succeed her husband as president. The Argentine example of government advertising as a reward system is not isolated. Podesta discussed how this is a global trend, where governments routinely place ads not according to proposed targeted audiences but instead as gifts to media outlets that show loyalty to the state. This is especially prevalent with regional newspapers located outside city centers, as their options for private sector advertising are scarce, leading many outlets to rely heavily on government advertising for financial stability.
Soft Censorship offers general though underwhelming recommendations for how to fix the problem. They include: increasing transparency of government advertising budgets, using litigation to enforce media freedoms, and modeling media after non-profits rather than profit-making ventures.
But Podesta acknowledged that even if those techniques proved helpful, they fail to to address the underlying demand for government advertising in the first place: traditional media’s failure as a successful commercial enterprise. His report is intended to be a first-look at soft censorship’s global reach, and, not surprisingly, its results beg more questions than provide definitive answers. That said, it is definitely worth a read.
— Norah Mallaney
This is a tricky issue. I’m reminded of a report in Tanzania’s government owned daily Habari Leo, back in January 09 (no link, I’m gazing at a yellowing cutting). The editor was complaining to a senior government official about delayed payments from various government offices for advertising. The total arrears amounted to TZS 250,000,000 (c. USD 190,000). This makes one wonder, in Tanzania is government the type of advertiser a publisher would like to attract? Why set up six pages of Form IV school exam results if you have to wait indefinitely to get payment? Maybe the possible sanctions are more ambiguous?
In Tanzanian print media, there is a reasonably clear pattern of where government advertising is placed and where it is not. More numbers would be a help in understanding the issue, but Tanzanian publishers, state and private, are notoriously coy about such things.