Media Rises To Meet Greatest Challenges

Michael Hedges February 27, 2012 Follow on Twitter

There are places where media carries the weight of life and survival, far more than celebrity gossip and playing the hits. Those who pursue this mission see, hear and feel the difference. It’s not something that can be valued simply in terms of money. That’s what makes it so difficult.

Radio Okapi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) celebrates this month its tenth year of broadcasting. The United Nations Mission in the DRC (MONUC) and the Swiss media development NGO Fondation Hirondelle launched the station in February 2002 as an independent news and information source. MONUC, known today as the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), is the UN peacekeeping force established in 1999 following the Second Congo War. The station, now a network covering the entire country, and its story are legends in post-conflict media development.

Fondation Hirondelle, founded by Swiss journalists and funded through several sources including the Swiss government, specializes in “radio for peace”, largely in French-speaking Africa. Noting the tenth anniversary, it calls Radio Okapi “the most ambitions project ever undertaken by the United Nations and Fondation Hirondelle.”  The station reaches more than 20 million listeners each week, about 30% of the DRC population, with programming in French and local languages. (See Fondation Hirondelle release on the Radio Okapi anniversary here – in French)

Media freedom in the DRC continues to suffer from "numerous cases of interference by politicians and security services,” said NGO Journaliste en Danger (JED) Tshivis Tshivuadi, quoted by Radio Netherlands Worldwide (January 11). During the 2011 presidential election campaign broadcasters and newspapers suggesting even a hint of opposition to President Joseph Kabila found themselves shuttered. JED and Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) reported more than 150 media-related “incidents” during 2011, including one journalist killed, dozens arrested, broadcast stations closed, rebroadcasting of foreign channels BBC, Radio France Internationale (RFI) and Africa No. 1 suspended and “other pressures.” The government banned text messaging (SMS) during the three weeks immediately before the elections. RFI broadcasting in DRC was allowed to resume after the elections.

“The population of DRC largely relies on radio broadcasts for the news due to high rates of illiteracy and the relatively high costs of newspapers and television,” said media freedom watcher Freedom House in its 2011 report. Radio Okapi “has set new standards for reporting and media objectivity in a volatile political scene.” Both Freedom House and RSF rank press freedom in the DRC at the very lowest reaches of the worldwide indexes.

Fondation Hirondelle is one of several organizations involved in media development. Funding is always an issue. Most receive grants and other support from governments and international aid agencies to take on projects deemed worthy where free-market investment is impossible. “The future of Radio Okapi belongs, first, to those who listen, the will of the (DRC) authorities, those donors who support this project and, of course, the station’s capability to generate sustainable means,” said Fondation Hirondelle’s tenth anniversary statement.

In recent years sustainability has become the major focus of media developers. Limitations are obvious as funding organizations assess needs in terms of success and failure. Radio Okapi’s annual budget (about US$4.5 million) is less than a half percent of MONUSCO’s annual expenditure and much of that comes from non-UN donors.

US-based Internews, like Fondation Hirondelle, is a “non-traditional humanitarian actor”, separate from larger aid agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and specializing in “strengthening the role of local media.” In its 2011 Annual Report it clarified how funding affects service:

“Internews’ biggest structural constraint to leveraging the innovation sparked by crisis is our project-funding model. Internews’ primary funders tend to support only discrete programs of activity, almost always within set geographic boundaries. This model allows the organization to be tremendously effective on a fairly broad scale. But this project funding model leaves relatively little flexibility to respond to natural disasters or conflicts, or the staff and organizational capacity to learn from, disseminate and scale up results following a crisis intervention.”

Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF) also participates in risky media projects with little possibility of free-market investment. It has long emphasized sustainability. “the majority of MDLF clients operate in ‘partially free’ countries (the Freedom House designation) as MDLF requires basic legal, political and economic standards before it can provide financing,” said MDLF’s Impact Dashboard 2011. “In many ‘not free’ countries it is nearly impossible for independent media to exist. However, MDLF remains committed to balancing risks across our portfolio to allow continued support of media development in countries with the greatest need.”

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