Two academics from the University of Westminster’s Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) are helping to promote media that serve the public across the Middle East and Africa.
With its regionally focussed centres, CAMRI is renowned for its global public interest research.
Professor Naomi Sakr and Dr Winston Mano, specialists in Arab and African media respectively, are working with institutions that advance media freedom in both regions.
Supporting public service media in Jordan
International Media Support (IMS), a Danish NGO active in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), involved Sakr in its EU-funded UNESCO Programme, ‘Support to Media in Jordan’, in 2014.
Sakr was commissioned to write ‘Good Practice in EU Public Service Media and Contemporary Practice’ in Jordan, which aimed to inform Jordanian government decision-making on public service television.
Sakr presented the report to Jordanian TV executives at a closed retreat several months before its publication, as part of discussions about feasible options.
Launched in July 2018, Al-Mamlaka, Jordan’s new public service channel, followed the “design and structure” recommended by Support to Media in Jordan, according to Assessment of Media Development in Jordan’s lead International Expert.
“As such,” he adds, “I believe that Professor Sakr’s work as part of the Support to Media in Jordan Project contributed to the EU-UNESCO mandate to encourage development and reform of Jordan’s media landscape”.
Setting the agenda: pan-African media reform
The Pan-African Parliament, the African Union’s legislative body, invited Mano to contribute as a Drafting Committee Member to the ‘Midrand Call to Action: Media Freedom and Public Broadcasting in Africa’.
The ‘Call to Action’ was issued at a 2013 media conference hosted by the Pan-African Parliament, and has been endorsed by over 33 civil society organisations, representing more than 200 African advocacy, research, human rights, democracy, and good governance networks.
Dr Mano’s insights, drawn from his academic research, helped create a Call to Action that demanded legislative reforms to transform state broadcasters into public broadcaster.
The Chair of the Conference’s organising committee
The Chair adds that “this adoption was of significant benefit to the agenda of reforming media legislation in Africa”.
PEN South Africa agrees.
In 2017, the advocacy group dubbed the Call to Action a key step in the “growing movement in Africa towards the decriminalisation of defamation”.
Defamation or ‘insult laws’, PEN argues, are a major constraint to press freedom, in the region.
The 2013 Conference Chair also feels Mano’s “crucial expertise and knowledge” has helped push forward Pan-African media reform initiatives.
“It has benefitted the Pan African Parliament, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and other organisations involved in media reform,” the Chair says.
“Such expertise is drawn upon for strategising around the democratisation of media in this region, and devising initiatives aimed at meeting this goal.”
Supporting Zimbabwean media reform
When a 2013 constitutional amendment opened up the possibility of media reform, the Media Institute of South Africa (MISA) asked Mano to help draft a new policy framework.
Mano’s work “directly influenced MISA's thinking on the key issues”, a MISA spokesperson says.
It also helped them use “language and format” to make the policy – which followed international standards – more palatable to stakeholders.
Mano’s ideas were adopted by the Media Alliance of Zimbabwe, who were later invited by the government, alongside other media advocacy groups, to suggest media policy reforms in 2018.
Mano is currently a Co-Director of The Chevening Africa Media Freedom Fellowship (CAMFF), hosted by the University of Westminster, aimed at mid-senior level African professionals working in areas of media policy and regulatory frameworks. The Fellows are from 11 Sub-Sahara African countries including Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Burundi, and Uganda, and undertake a bespoke eight-week fellowship programme titled ‘New Media for a New Africa: Freedom of Speech, Economic Prosperity and Good Governance’.
Fighting “toxic stress” with positive media for Arab refugee children
Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) teamed up to apply for a $100m MacArthur Foundation award to create educational media for refugee children across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq in 2017.
In light of her research on children’s TV and digital media in Arab regions, the two organisations sought Sakr’s advice on networking with Arab broadcasters and regional contacts.
She also wrote a letter supporting their ‘100&Change Prize’ application, which they won in December 2017.
Among other things, Sesame Workshop and IRC are using the funding to address “toxic stress” with culturally relevant multimedia content for nine million refugee children and their carers.
Both organisations thanked Sakr “for lending your powerful voice” to the application.
Improving media for Arab children in Europe
Sakr co-organised a series of dialogues between Arab-European creatives, in 2017 and 2018, with the aim of supporting the media needs of Arab children living in Europe, through forced migration.
The Egyptian Arts & Culture Programme Manager at the intergovernmental Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Initiative says his participation “enriched” his “ability to recognise desirable and suitable qualities of children’s media”. This has helped him to optimise the design of his collaborations and to select suitable partners.
Speaking for Blink Studios, Nathalie Habib says taking part in the events allowed the company to “raise awareness in Dubai and Abu Dhabi of trends in children’s screen media in Europe”.
She feels it also empowered her to challenge “stereotyping and cultural misunderstanding” amongst European media producers.
Find out more
Connect with Naomi Sakr
Connect with Winston Mano
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