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"People, Spaces, Deliberation" was launched in 2008 by the Communication for Governance and Accountability Program (CommGAP) and is now published by the External Affairs Operational Communication of the World Bank. The blog is edited by Sina Odugbemi and Diana Chung.
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It is generally accepted that independent news media are one of the main building blocks for good governance. Ensuring media’s independence from the control of the powerful is a difficult task, however. While the media must maintain a critical distance from the government so as to maintain their objectivity in reporting the news, they also need to stay close enough to government in order to access the information they seek. The issues of distance and access are the two sides of the same coin, and they confront the government as well. On the one hand, the government has to protect both the privacy of sensitive information and integrity of important decision-making processes by keeping the media at bay, but on the other hand, government also needs to maintain an amicable relationship with the media so that the media would tell its side of the story and frame issues in the way it wants them framed.
In June 2007, just a few days before he left office, former British Prime Minister 
