Equatorial Guinea 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.
MSI Overview | Africa | Asia | Europe & Eurasia | Middle East & North Africa
Download Complete Equatorial Guinea Chapter (PDF): 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2006/7 | 2006/7 (français)
MSI Equatorial Guinea-2010 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 0.94
Near the end of 2009, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema secured a new term in an election Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) quickly proclaimed rigged. The fact that Nguema won re-election, with 95 percent of the vote, surprised no one and drew little protest from the country’s long-suffering media. In his 30 years in power, he confiscated the state-owned media, turned them against the opposition, and ensured that the independent media in Guinea are virtually nonexistent.
According to RSF, the state-owned radio-television station, RT VGE, covered Nguema’s activities tirelessly, while the four opposition candidates received minimal media coverage. RT VGE did not organize any debates and essentially ignored the opposition. As for the print media, the official biweekly newspaper, Ebano, housed in the Ministry of Information, dedicated two issues to the presidential elections. In one, the newspaper published the electoral program of the opposition but did not give the candidates the opportunity to express themselves as freely as the ruling party.
In Equatorial Guinea the privately owned press consists of just three publications, and the government expends considerable energy obstructing their efforts, making it nearly impossible, for example, for one independent paper, La Opinion, to print. The government’s efforts to control the media have caused it to lose credibility with the public, however. Self-censorship is widespread, and according to some journalists, the only reliable news source is the Internet. But due to instability in the telecommunications sector, Internet access is not available to the entire population, and costs can be exorbitant.
Over the past few years that the MSI has studied the media in Equatorial Guinea, the opinions and comments of the participants describe the collapse of the media in a corrupt dictatorship, where the journalists feel a sense of gloom that a strong and independent media could ever emerge. Journalists are not even allowed to convene as a group to discuss issues affecting the media. The Ministry of Information, exclusively consisting of members of the ruling party, the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (known by its French acronym, PDGE), acts as a media regulation agency and keeps a close eye on any and all activities or meetings involving the media.
This is the reason why, for the fourth consecutive year, it has been impossible to convene an expert panel of journalists to discuss Equatorial Guinea’s media situation and conduct the MSI study. Not just because a request for such a panel is subject to the express authorization of the Ministry of Information, but also because no journalist or media professional is willing to risk being seen at such a meeting. As a result, journalists have agreed to answer the MSI questionnaire only with the protection of anonymity.
Due to the oppressive political environment, panelists for Equatorial Guinea agreed to participate only on
condition of anonymity.
