Resources - Research Reports
Research Reports are indepth, often quantitative reports around our various programme areas.
Category: Media Freedom and Performance [REMOVE]
- The Best Promoter & Worst Violator of Children’s Rights in SA Print Media (January - March 2011)
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MMA has produced a MAD OAT quarterly report for the first three months of 2011. This report is a qualitative assessment of articles published by mainstream print mediums which, in our view, clearly violated or promoted children’s rights.
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- Children’s Views not in the News; Portrayal of Children in South African Print Media 2010
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MMA has been monitoring and analysing print media’s performance, in terms of how it reports on children, since 2003. This is its fourth report on the topic, and since 2003 the percentage of articles featuring children has doubled.
Author and MMA’s Specialised Children’s Monitoring Project Coordinator Ronell Singh says that “while we are seeing gradual progress being made in how the media reports on children, there is still plenty of room for improvement – look at how few features or in-depth analysis articles deal with children for example – just 4%. It is these longer and more in depth articles that can better explore children’s issues and put them on the agenda, and yet, even since last year, we are seeing children appearing in fewer of these articles instead of more.”
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- Children’s Views not in the News; Portrayal of Children in South African Print Media 2009 -2010
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For this report MMA monitored 13 of South Africa’s major news publications for content on children over a period of nine months (from September 2009 to May 2010. Since 2003 the coverage afforded to children, children’s rights and their issues by the South African media has been steadily growing. According to this report it stands at 11.4%. But there is still significant room for improvement, both in terms of the quantity and quality of reporting on children.
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- 2009 Election Coverage: Did media assist citizens in making an informed decision?
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In Media Monitoring Africa’s final weekly report on the 2009 Elections, we focus on the overall performance of media in terms of their role in enabling South African citizens to fully and effectively participate in their democracy through the provision of relevant and timely information in the lead up to the elections on April 22.
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- Deadly silence - Media election coverage confirms disinterest in the welfare of children
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With the exception of a handful of articles by some journalists, election coverage highlighting the serious issues faced by South African children has been extremely disappointing for its absence. In the previous weekly report, it was noted that in media’s role of holding government to account and informing citizens, it was particularly important for media to give voice to the concerns and opinions of the marginalised in society, as so often they remain silenced through powerlessness and political disinterest. It is even more important that media fulfil this role during an election period, when the need for information and potential for influence and change is the greatest.
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- Women? What women?! - Media contributes to the disempowerment of women
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It is clear that issues around gender equality, women’s poverty and health are of primary importance to South Africa. Women form a greater proportion of South Africa’s population and a greater proportion of the rural population (which is also the most poorly serviced), head a greater number of households (which are more likely to be poor and earn less than male-headed households), are affected by HIV/Aids the most, and suffer alarming levels of gender-based violence. MMA’s monitoring demonstrates that this has not been reflected in media’s election coverage, when these issues should come to the forefront of many (if not the greater majority of) reports.
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- Is media campaigning for ANC and COPE?: Election Report for week ending 28 March 2009
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While it is reasonable to expect the ANC as the ruling party to receive greater attention in news coverage, information that is useful to citizens for enabling informed participation has been few and far between. The coverage has in fact often appeared as an extension of Political Advertisements, and should therefore be far more limited in number and extent. This argument can also be extended to the attention received by other parties, with coverage exhibiting a bias towards the new party Cope at the expense of other more established parties.
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- Meeting their public mandate?: A Critical Analysis of South African Media Statutory Bodies
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This book, published by the Open Society Foundation and written by various organisations, offers insignt into the South African Media Statutory Bodies. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the Universal Services Agency, and the Media Development and Diversity Agency are explored in terms of their mandates. The Media Monitoring Project conducted the research and wrote the analysis of the SABC.
Placed here with the kind permission of the Open Society Foundation.
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- Whose blacklist is it anyway?
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In a constitutional democracy like the South African, it is commonly accepted and entirely uncontroversial to assert the central role allocated to an independent public service broadcaster in facilitating informed public debate based on the central tenets, as stated in the SABC Charter, of free speech and journalistic and programming independence. However, as witnessed by recent public debate, the SABC is currently being challenged on the extent to which its editorial policy remains in compliance with these basic democratic principles.
In this context, the Media Monitoring Project (MMP), an independent media monitoring organisation which has been monitoring the media since 1993, sees its role as to assess the merits of these claims. As an independent organisation of civil society, the MMP remains independent of all parties and undertakes evaluations of compliance with constitutional principles and professional media practices. In this sense the MMP’s aim is to secure the primacy of the constitution, which constitutes the MMP’s only substantive bias.
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