Chad Media Sustainability Index (MSI)
March 14, 2012
About the MSI
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.
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Download Complete Chad Chapter (PDF): 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2006/7 | 2006/7 (français)
MSI Chad-2010 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 1.89
In 2010, Chad was one of the 18 African countries that celebrated 50 years of independence. During those 50 years, many waves of internal political turmoil and years of bad blood with its neighbors—particularly Libya and Sudan—have impacted Chad, and it now ranks among the poorest nations in the world. Despite this bleak picture, and the serious problems remaining with press freedom, the 2010 MSI panelists said that they felt generally optimistic. They noted signs of improvement compared to previous years regarding press freedom in Chad, and even described an atmosphere of cooperation between the private media and the government.
The panelists noted that no journalists have been sent to jail since January 2010, despite some isolated threats. Also, in 2010 the government invited all media outlets to cover official events, and opened up access to some sources of information. For example, in an Independence Day press conference, President Idriss Déby invited journalists to ask him anything, and encouraged his ministers to adopt the same approach toward the media.
Other moves contradicted the spirit of growing cooperation, with the authorities interfering and preventing journalists from covering sensitive events. Also, in August, Chad’s National Assembly passed a new media law that drew concern quickly. Although the government touted the law for decriminalizing certain press offenses, press freedom advocates leaped to criticize the law for its mere transference of the threat of journalist prison sentences to other offenses, such as inciting racial and ethnic tension or violence.
Censorship and self-censorship persist, and essentially the state holds a monopoly over television.
Poor training and pay for journalists, along with limited sources of revenue for the media, have hurt Chadian media as well. Given Chad’s almost-nonexistent advertising market, media outlets face enormous economic difficulties. In addition, press companies are managed badly: at some outlets, the director of publication, the sales manager, and the administrator are members of the same family.
The panelists conceded that they have seen clear improvement in observation of professional standards. Although the sector still has some glaring exceptions, the professional media organization Observatoire de la Déontologie et de l’Éthique des Médias au Tchad (ODEMET) ensures that such lapses are corrected swiftly. Professionalism is lacking in part because Chad still has no university-level college of journalism. The panelists concluded, though, that the country does have great journalists, and their work alongside young journalists can be considered teaching in an informal school of journalism.
