[ New Media in SEE ]

Most transition countries in Southeast Europe have made progress in the development of professional independent media, a new IREX report shows. However, fully sustainable media have yet to be achieved in any of the countries, according to the Media Sustainability Index (MSI) for 2004. It is the only study that critically examines the entire media sector in each of the surveyed countries against their achievement of five complex objectives: free speech, professional standards of quality, plurality of news sources, business sustainability and supporting institutions.

The article on the IREX Sustainability Report has been published by "Southeast European Times" on June 27, 2005.

As usual, media are closely connected within the IREX objectives to democracy, civil society, and - this is almost singular - education (see also the article by Noemi Marin and Laura Lengel in the "Global Media Journal", 2002). Thus, the summary of the report states that the training in modern techniques and equipment is poor on the one hand, and that young journalists who studied at foreign universities do not come back and help to improve the state of affairs, on the other.

With regard to the ranking of the countries there are only slight changes: a media analysis from 1999 already shows that the worst situation concerning the distribution of and accessability to media is in Albania, while Croatia, ranking first within the 2004-report, counts as relatively developed.

Last, the study "Media Ownership and Its Impact on Media Independence and Pluralism" by SEENPM is available as E-Book. It is not only important if media are state-owned or "independent"; there are many variations of (in)dependence.