The Republic of Palau is an archipelago chain of nearly 300 islands of which only 9 of the islands are inhabited. Due to the unique land and marine environment, only the PBS AM frequency is able to reach distant/isolated communities. However, the existing AM transmitter and antenna equipment have long out-lived their expected life cycle and maintenance costs exceed performance outcomes. The AM frequency no longer reaches 6 remote islands representing 40% of the population. The recent relocation of Government to the Northern Melekeok State increased the percentage of the population losing...
Regions: Asia and the Pacific
The media rather poorly serves the North and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka. There are two dailies, Valampuri and Thunakkural and neither local television nor radio. All programmes are transmitted from Colombo, aim at upcountry people and are manned by the government. While Internet connectivity exists, it is far from adequate. In these areas, the media is not free; it is closely censored by the national authorities and endowed with automatic self-censorship. While some daily papers may be available, there are neither weeklies nor magazines for the majority of Tamil-speaking people of the...
The Nauru Media Bureau faces problems of a limited client base, very old or damaged equipment, lack of staff with appropriate journalism and production skills/experience. The application seeks funding to obtain high-level training from recognized regional providers on best-use and maintenance of equipment, basic journalism skills for news collection and broadcasting, and the production of radio and TV programmes. Nauru had 17 changes of administration between 1989 and 2003. The lack of access to information and source of news on Government has been identified as a major cause of unstable...
Both print and broadcast organisations display a lack in preparation of the young journalists to enable them to improve coverage of the country's newsworthy activities. To date, the two private FM stations only broadcast music and entertainment programmes. Efforts are on the ground to set up a Journalists' Association of Bhutan that will help in determining the training needs and guide the vision for long-term training in this field. An immense challenge facing the media today is professional training of journalists and limited knowledge on how to report news, feature stories,...
While the FSM does have some semblance of a mass media in the form of limited newspapers and international cable television, radio remains the most effective, affordable and accessible media forum for the majority of the population in the FSM, including Yap. Yap has only one government-run radio station, which also operates a free television channel provided to the State government through a cable television agreement with the FSM Telecommunications Corporation. Both the radio (AM and FM) and the television channel are operated by the Division of Media, which, for the most part, is free to...
The Afghan media has made considerable progress since the downfall of the Taliban. The magazine, ROZ?founded in 2002, is one of the first magazines in the country to have been created by Afghan women for Afghan women. Since its foundation, it has actively sought to provide Afghan women with information on all aspects of their daily lives, while affording them a long-denied opportunity for access to culture. ROZ's staff have all been trained and have evolved with the magazine. Currently boasting a circulation of 6,000, the magazine has earned a reputation for quality as well as a loyal...
Print press in Bangladesh is pluralist and free. Broadcasting includes private satellite and radio channels. But many media do not respect media ethics. The media in Bangladesh is now virtually acting like the Fourth Estate. Despite all the freedom and 'fourth estate' status, one seldom sees any investigative and in-depth reporting in either newspaper or in television. Even those reports, which are printed with an investigative report tag, are not investigative reports in true sense, since the ingredients of investigative reports are missing from those stories. Lack of training for...
The Talas Oblast, a remote region in North-West of Kyrgyzstan holds several sad records nationwide: the highest maternity death rate (polyclinic statistics), the highest dowry for girls (newspapers) and children lagging behind in physical development due to inappropriate meals (UNICEF). Moreover, informative media coverage on these issues is difficult to come across. The state-controlled local newspaper published an article blaming the increase of village women coming for delivery to the city hospital to spoil the otherwise good birth statistics of that clinic. The dowry rates in Kyrgyz...
In Bangladesh, mass media ? both print and electronic ? had gone through a turbulent period until restoration of democracy in 1990. However, the situation is still not ideal. There are many laws and several sections under the Bangladesh Penal Code that affect the free functioning of the press. The most important of them is the Official Secrets Act. This 19th century Act, which might have served the purposes of colonial rule, remains in force. Once electronic media was a government monopoly, and now there are a number of satellite-based private TV and radio stations, but their concentration...
Central Asian media organizations face a myriad of changes in a region where economic and political conditions vary widely. It is an opportune time for these organizations to reposition themselves through wise management of human resource development programmes in order to grow and become self reliant. Although modern technologies continue to transform the media industries, they cannot replace human creativity and competence. Journalists, engineers and managers have realized that the skills with which they started in their professional careers are no longer sufficient. At the same time,...
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