Eritrea Media Sustainability Index (MSI)
March 15, 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 Eritrea Chapter (PDF): 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2006/7
MSI Eritrea-2010 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 0.24
All media sources within Eritrea have been under state control since September 2001, when the government essentially stamped out all independent outlets, rounding up at least 15 independent journalists and sending them to prison. Some reportedly have died in prison and, over the years, even staff members working in government-owned media establishments have gone to prison, fled the country, or disappeared.
The Ministry of Information, the government arm that controls the media, runs a website with “serving the truth” as its maxim. However, its postings amount to propaganda lauding Eritrea’s performance in all sectors of national development. The absolute absence of independent media also limits the possibilities to challenge the government line or determine whether government media reports have any shred of authenticity.
In addition to the difficulty of merely obtaining information about the Eritrean media, assigning scores to some MSI questions is challenging, as many of the questions are designed to assess the strength of the independent media. Rising restrictions on Internet access, and the fear that seems to have engulfed Eritrean journalists, underscore the ever-worsening state of the media in Eritrea.
When asked to take part in the evaluation of Eritrean media again for 2010, a former MSI participant asked back, “What media?” Many potential respondents had a similar reaction. Such muted forms of participation and response are tacit justification for the extremely low MSI scores.
The MSI questionnaire for 2010 was sent to various media departments within the Ministry of Information and to quite a number of individuals in the Eritrean diaspora. While there was no reply at all from the former, the diaspora Eritreans expressed overwhelmingly that the survey cannot be applied to the Eritrean media sector as long as it has no independent outlets.
The only glimmer of hope stems from the Eritrean websites based outside the country. They are spreading out like shoots across the Internet and are sustaining the Eritrean media presence, providing a variety of news and critical analysis on Eritrean issues. Expatriates perhaps hold the potential for the establishment of a culture of independent media. At this point, however, Eritrean media seem to be in a state of arrested development.
All MSI participants were Eritreans living in exile. The MSI panelists participated remotely by completing the MSI questionnaire and being interviewed by the IREX moderator, also an Eritrean in exile. Given the geographic dispersion of the panelists, a full discussion was not held. While not all panelists asked to remain anonymous, because of the political situation in Eritrea IREX decided not to publish their names.
