Strategies to Support Public Interest Media in Low- and Middle-income Countries: What Works and What Doesn't - Learning Brief

"What works best in supporting independent media and public interest content are well-planned, long-term, highly strategic and well-resourced programmes tailored to the political and economic conditions in which they are being implemented."



This learning brief describes the design and implementation strategies of the Protecting Independent Media for Effective Development (PRIMED) programme, and what has and has not worked in delivering effective media development support programmes. The brief draws on the experience of PRIMED consortium members and evidence and data gathered as part of the programme's progress and impact reporting. In addition to outlining implementation approaches and lessons learned, it seeks to identify concrete and actionable recommendations that may be useful when designing similar media development initiatives.



The three-year PRIMED programme (launched in late 2020) was designed to support public interest media in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone - addressing critical challenges, building resilience, and sharing research and insight about what works. The programme was implemented by a consortium of media support organisations with expertise in different aspects of media and development. These were BBC Media Action (consortium lead), Free Press Unlimited (FPU), International Media Support (IMS), and Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), with further contributions from Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), and The Communication Initiative (CI). This brief is the fifth and final in a series of learning briefs and builds on the more detailed lessons and conclusions contained in four previous PRIMED learning briefs and the programme's other learning materials. (See Related Summaries for all the learning briefs published by PRIMED.) It also reflects conclusions from two interim external reviews as well as early insights from a final external programme review.



The brief discusses how PRIMED was created, rolled out, and adapted to work in the three main countries, which all have very different political and economic environments. As explained in the brief, after a 10-month co-creation phase, the following PRIMED implementation approach principles were determined:

• Context-driven: PRIMED analysed the wider political context, the economy, and market dynamics and designed a methodology to identify obstacles and opportunities.
• Content-led: PRIMED was designed to encourage public interest content where media outlets' institutional independence has become impossible.
• Locally-led: Reform initiatives were locally owned and led, with PRIMED providing technical assistance and facilitation.
• Delivered through a consortium of expertise: Consortium members collaborated to provide supplementary skills and expertise and adopt a consistent application across the programme.
• Agile: It was acknowledged that changes and agility would be needed as the programme progressed to allow PRIMED to take advantage of opportunities and to step back early where progress was not being made - especially when financial allocations were subjected to cuts each year.

PRIMED used several delivery strategies. It worked with a range of media outlets and content producers in line with strategic, locally-led engagement plans that were developed with each media partner. In particular, the programme:

• Provided capital investment;
• Supported institution building;
• Enabled media outlets to reconfigure their business and organisational set-up;
• Supported editorial and production revamps;
• Helped with digital migration and digital skills development;
• Invested in business development and audience engagement functions; and
• Supported technical rebuilds to improve production and reduce costs.

PRIMED also worked with a range of advocacy groups, trade unions, and civil society organisations, supporting local coalitions to improve the safety of journalists, advocate for greater media freedom, and ensure better representation of women in the media. This element of the programme's work also helped instigate national conversations about the role of the media as a public good, and how public subsidies could support content creation.



The brief examines how these strategies worked in practice and concludes that:

• Working closely with local content producers and using a customised programme of support proved to be effective. However, it only worked well where there was a shared vision in the holistic approach, which helped to build trust between the owners/senior managers and the PRIMED support team.
• Providing timely and intensive technical expertise and facilitation to locally-led coalitions and initiatives allowed PRIMED to accelerate opportunities for reform, but significant improvements in the media environment take a long time. Political will can be short-lived.
• PRIMED successfully deployed market and non-market solutions to enhance the financial viability of media outlets, but longer support programmes are needed.
• Improved financial resilience of media outlets may not lead to improved independence in highly politicised and co-opted media markets.
• In current market and political conditions, media development impact cannot easily be achieved with small-scale efforts and investments in small outlets with limited reach. Media support packages should be based on clear value for money criteria.
• Embedding gender targets in overall reform programmes to secure greater representation in the workplace worked well, but supporting external monitoring to improve the portrayal of women in the media has not proved to be effective.
• Working with a state broadcaster is necessary where it has significant and unparalleled reach.

As part of PRIMED's objective to create and share learning to contribute to a more targeted and impactful global approach to supporting media outlets, the brief outlines the following practical recommendations for designing future media development programmes:  

1. Spend time to understand how media content is consumed, who produces it, and why, which is essential to achieving lasting change. Media support programmes should allow sufficient time to understand the context before designing their interventions.
2. Adopt a holistic business analysis approach, which is likely to work better than the traditional needs assessment approach. It is also an effective way of ensuring that reform programmes are locally led and context led.
3. Be aware that not all media organisations can be supported. Tough choices have to be made and defended, and media development experts need to be ready to walk away from failing partnerships.
4. Support the organisations behind local coalitions, even though local coalitions should lead the media environment reform agenda.
5. Embed gender targets in the media outlets' reform programmes. The commitment shown by media outlets' leaders is fundamental to progress in this area.
6. Design agile programmes that can respond to changing opportunities, and be ready to terminate workstreams that fail to show results.
7. Use expertise from across the media development sector by bringing in the right skills at the right time. Simplifying programme governance structures and contracting in specific skills will reduce overheads and speed up delivery.
8. Acknowledge and address the mismatch between the reality of short-term funding cycles and the lengthy process of improving media ecosystems.

The overall conclusion is that even in the context of a global pandemic and substantial and unpredictable budget cuts, much of what the programme delivered did achieve programme objectives. The PRIMED approach has been shown to work. However, experience showed that it is considered insufficient to avoid democratic backsliding in the face of actors intent on undermining, co-opting, and neutralising independent media. These actors' strategies to control narratives, spread disinformation, or avoid scrutiny and accountability tend to be well (and predictably) resourced, implemented over long time periods, and embedded in existing power structures. They are further enabled by broader media environments that facilitate the spread of disinformation and stoke polarisation, particularly those created by technology platforms. To achieve lasting change, organisations that seek to defend independent media need to respond to and reflect the staying power and resourcing of those who want to undermine independent media.