Cedovip’s director, Tina Musuya, was recently the focus of a full-page feature in the Saturday edition of the New Vision newspaper. The journalist asked her some awful questions but she handled if very well. Have a look here.

One of Deane’s key points is that there is a wealth of information available on a range of development issues, that would enable citizens to hold the powerful to account — statistics, surveys, budget data and so on — but seemingly little demand for this information. He says one of the reasons for this is there are few efforts to convey this information to people in a form that is accessible.

I believe Deane is right and I believe that we who work within civil society need to make a lot more effort to ensure that we do make such information accessible. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen great research projects, books written and published, surveys conducted, at great expense — only for those involved to then say, “what now — how do we disseminate this information?  We don’t have a budget for dissemination”. The dissemination and communication needs to be built in to the project right from the start — with a decent budget to make sure can be done effectively. Otherwise all that money will have been wasted on research, books and papers that sit on shelves and gather dust.

Of course, we also all believe that the media have a crucial role to play in helping us disseminate our information, in helping us raise our concerns. Deane points this out as a crucial way of creating demand for the information. But he then goes on to point out a danger in this — that civil society, government and donor agencies begin to see the media simply as an agent for them to convey their information to the people. In other words, the media becomes just a development instrument.

Deane’s point is very important. In every training workshop I facilitate, people complain about the media — that they’re not interested in the information on offer, that they get the information wrong, that they’re simply interested in selling papers or advertising, and not in uplifting society. These are all problems, but at the same time, they’re problems we have to learn to live with — have to learn to overcome, without interfering with the independence of the media, without seeking to control journalists. As Deane points out, it is crucial for the media to be more than just a conveyor of development-related information, or as he puts it, “a conduit for [our] campaigns and concerns”. This is because an independent media is a crucial part of the “democratic fabric” of society.

Thus, we need to learn how to get the media to investigate serious issues and how to persuade them to cover our “campaigns and concerns,” but we need to do this in ways that support and respect media independence. To do otherwise is to threaten the future of democracy and accountability altogether.

One of the common complaints people make is that it’s very difficult to get an article into the media. And by that, they usually mean national newspapers, and then the government-owned radio and TV stations.

The papers in many countries tend to be dominated by reports of political infighting on the one hand, and sport on the other, with little space for serious coverage of social issues.

The government-owned broadcast media are generally not open to running reports critical of government action or policy.

But once people put a bit of thought into the various types and range of media that really do exist in a country, and think a bit more creatively about story approaches, the situation always starts to look a lot more hopeful.

It’s a good idea to sit down and start to list all the media outlets you can think of. And think beyond just the major newspapers, radio and TV channels. Think about local papers, specialist papers, niche publications, magazines, consumer magazines, retail club magazines, specialist magazines, professional journals, church and club newsletters, community radio stations, private stations, music stations. Then there are websites and blogs and news feeds. Suddenly, there seem to be a lot more possibilities.

Then start to get creative. For example, a police communications officer might think of approaching a horse lovers magazine to do a feature on mounted urban patrols. Or a cycling magazine to write about police officers who patrol on bikes. A car magazine might be interested in looking at how the police get to remote villages across difficult terrain. And so on.

Even government-owned media can often be persuaded to run stories they normally wouldn’t, if you frame the issue cleverly. No government is monolithic, and it is possible to frame a critical report in a way that makes it seem you’re doing government a favour. For example, instead of saying, “government is still failing to live up to its commitment to spend 15% of the budget on health”, say, “the government has been brave in committing to spend 15% on health, but it seems to be struggling to find ways to make that commitment a reality. We think our research could provide government with some pointers on how this could be achieved…”

The thing is to keep thinking creatively and to keep trying. It’s not so much about getting one big bang, as about having a constant stream of publicity, all over the place. And media coverage leads to more media coverage. The thing is, to get a foot in the door.