The Enabling Environment for Free and Independent Media

Monroe Price, of the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Peter Krug of the University of Oklahoma College of Law discuss the interaction of formal law, administrative process and the broader enabling conditions for the effective functioning of healthy media systems. Bad law is not the greatest threat to media freedoms, rather administrative acts which apply the law arbitrarily or beyond its proper legal boundaries. Moreover, audiences need 'a special kind of literacy..that encompasses a desire to acquire, interpret and apply information as part of civil society'. This is essential for the broader enabling media environment. However, more research is required to decode how the many elements of the enabling environment for independent media can be linked to phases of national political transitions.