Media and Development: The Dysfunctional Alliance

Autor/innen

  • Mark Nelson

Schlagworte:

Media development, institutional reform, development effectiveness, development assistance, media sector, development policies, open societies, governance

Abstract

This essay looks at the dysfunctional relationship between overall international development assistance and more specific support to the media sector. While the international donor community sees the potential of independent media in developing countries to contribute to societies’ economic and social progress, international development policies rarely have a coherent, integrated approach to the media sector, and foreign assistance often fails to achieve its goal of helping countries create a sustainable, independent media that acts in the interests of society as a whole. Indeed, leaders of many countries have decided that media—and especially unfettered, independent media—is more likely to be an obstacle, at least to their political fortunes, than a support. The author proposes three ways that the international community could improve its work on media development and build stronger political commitment for independent media. First is strengthening country leadership and ownership of media development initiatives. This requires building local knowledge about the role of media in open societies and about how to manage a strong, independent media system. Second is integration of media development work within the broader development agenda, leveraging more of the $135 billion that donors spend annually on official development assistance. Third is improving data, diagnostics, and learning on the media sector, particularly in developing countries, and creating a better understanding of how country-level media sectors are evolving, and how they can be best supported.

Autor/innen-Biografie

Mark Nelson

Mark Nelson is Senior Director at the National Endowment for Democracy, where he heads the Center for International Media Assistance. From 1996-2013, he was a governance specialist at the World Bank and worked on aid effectiveness and global development policies. From 1985 through 1996, Mr. Nelson was European diplomatic correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, based in Brussels, Berlin and Paris. He covered the negotiations leading to the Maastricht Treaty, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the war in Bosnia.

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Zitationsvorschlag

Nelson, M. (2015). Media and Development: The Dysfunctional Alliance. Global Media Journal - German Edition, 4(2). Abgerufen von https://globalmediajournal.de/index.php/gmj/article/view/77