The Media Barometers by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

The Media Barometers were developed by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), a German political foundation politically affiliated with the Social Democratic Party and committed to the values of social democracy.

MISA is a regional non-governmental organisation that advocates for media freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of information. MISA has its regional secretariat in Windhoek and national chapters in most countries of Southern Africa.

FES is a private cultural non-profit institution. It is mainly financed by the German federal government budget through the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

What is Friedrich Ebert Stiftung's approach?
The Media Barometers are conceived as a homegrown self-assessment instrument, looking at four sectors of media freedom: the protection of free expression, diversity and independence of the media landscape, transparent regulation of broadcasting and professional standards in journalism. Despite their qualitative character the assessment works with scores for each of these sectors on a scale from 0 to 5. The score indicated in the Media Freedom Navigator is the average of the sectors' scores. A higher score reflects a higher level of media freedom. FES stresses that scores and reports are not comparable between different nations.

There are 3 Media Barometers. The African Media Barometer (AMB) was developed in 2004 by FES and the Media Institute of Southern Africa. It has served as a basis for the Asian Media Barometer (ANMB) that was introduced in 2009, and the Balkan Media Barometer (BMB) that was carried out for the first time in 2012.

AMB, ANMB and BMB each use a different set of 39 indicators derived from international or regional declarations, protocols and principles. Respectively, the criteria of the AMB are derived from the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa (2002) by the African Commission for Human and Peoples' Rights. Since the Asian-Pacific region lacks a comparable regional mechanism on Freedom of Expression, design and method of the ANMB have been adapted for Asia from the African Media Barometer. The BMB's indicators reflect standards referenced in European Union and Council of Europe documents.

The indicators are grouped into four sectors: freedom of expression; media landscape; broadcasting regulation; and professional standards.

Each indicator is rated on a scale from 0 to 5, with 0 meaning that the country does not meet the indicator; and 5 meaning that the country meets all aspects of the indicator. The indicator scores are averaged to obtain a single, overall score for each sector. The overall country score, eventually, is an average of all four sector's scores. In 2014, however, FES has ceased to include overall country scores in its reports.

How are the Media Barometers compiled?
In order to evaluate the media systems, an expert panel discusses each indicator and in the end every panelist allocates an individual score in an anonymous vote.
The panel consists of 5-6 local media practitioners and 5-6 local representatives from civil society. The discussion is moderated by an independent consultant, who also edits the country report.

For more information, see the web page of FES's media project fesmedia. For a more detailed analysis of the African Media Barometer, its methodology, its strengths and weaknesses, and how it compares with other indices, see DW Akademie guidebook "Media Freedom Indices - What they tell us and what they don't". More links are provided in the Media Freedom Navigator resources section.