About the MSI
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IREX designed the MSI to measure the strength and viability of any country's media sector. The MSI considers all the factors that contribute to a media system—the quality of journalism, effectiveness of management, the legal environment supporting freedom of the press, and more—to arrive at scores on a scale ranging between 0 and 4. These scores represent the strength of the media sector components and can be analyzed over time to chart progress (or regression) within a country. Additionally, countries or regions may be compared to one another. IREX currently conducts the MSI in 80 countries, and began studying Africa in 2006.
MSI Overview [8] | Africa [9] | Asia [10] | Europe & Eurasia [11] | Middle East & North Africa [12]
MSI Methodology [13]
Download Complete Central African Republic Chapter (PDF): 2012 [14] | 2010 [15] |2009 [16] | 2008 [17] | 2006/7 [18]| 2006/7 (français) [19]
MSI Central African Republic - 2012 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 1.77
Media professionals in the Central African Republic (CAR) continue to subsist despite deteriorating working conditions, meager operating budgets, dilapidated facilities, and technical barriers to disseminating their reporting. They face government tactics of harassment, suspensions, and other deterrents, particularly in relation to the country’s persisting problems of corruption and banditry in the southeast. All of these factors complicate the media scene and create a largely unsustainable environment for the press.
In 2012, a donor-funded project sponsored by the EU and French Embassy laid out the areas of concern for media development in coming years. Anticipated legal reforms would vest authority in official regulators, while allowing the High Communications Council (HCC) only the power to exact administrative sanctions in cases of violations of journalistic ethics.
In preparation for these changes, the Central African Media Observatory (CAR’s self-regulation body, known by its French acronym, OMCA) underwent genuine restructuring. In April 2012, the OMCA Elective General Assembly permitted the establishment of a new office consisting of five elected members, and a review of OMCA’s status. In addition, a new code of ethics for Central African journalists was adopted.
Current CAR law accommodates online media, and in practice, online media outlets are left to operate without interference. This is in contrast to the print and broadcast sectors, which are subject regularly to government interventions that skirt the law. But the significance of this development may lie in the fact that only a tiny proportion of the republic’s population—less than 3 percent—uses the Internet.
As the country enters the digital age, its media sector continues to face the struggles it has had for decades. Newspapers are many, but are all published in the capital, Bangui, with little distribution to the interior. Radio stations remain the primary conduit for information.
The MSI panelists assigned equal blame to HCC and the country’s private professional institutions for the shortcomings in journalism practice. Outlets friendly to the opposition are allowed to exist and even criticize the government, but their circulation is low, and operational costs deep in the interior of Africa are astronomical. The panelists agreed that freedom of speech protections and rule of law are lacking, but the economic constraints on the development of stronger media enterprises remain the greatest challenge to Central African Republic media.
The Central African Republic study was coordinated by, and conducted in partnership with, Journaliste en Danger, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.