Taking Measure of a Bastion of Democracy

In the birthplace of democracy will be discussed the strengthening of a bastion of democracy.  The 2008 Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) will be held in Athens, Greece, next week and will draw hundreds of people from around the world who promote, study, and work in the media sector.  Sina Odugbemi, CommGAP’s program head, will be speaking on “The Roles of the News Media in the Governance Reform Agenda.” 

Skimming over next week’s program, I recall a heated debate during the first GFMD in 2005 in Amman, Jordan, on whether the media development sector should use more intensively Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) frameworks to better gauge the sector’s effectiveness in contributing to the achievement of good governance outcomes.  This topic, according to this year’s schedule, will again be dealt with in significant detail.

From a development perspective, gauging effectiveness is a critical feature of any project or program, and it’s no different for the media.  Committing resources toward institutions that are meant to serve society requires accountability to some set of good governance objectives.  What these particular objectives might be and the ways in which the media might help achieve them promises to be a contested discussion better left to people who have intimate knowledge of both the media sector and specific domestic and local contexts.  What I do hope, for now, is that GFMD 2008 will help bring into sharp focus the view that, in democratic societies, the media system is a critical component of good governance and should be supported and evaluated as such.

Photo credit: Flickr user karpidis