The International Press Institute is encouraged by a series of positive meetings with government officials, diplomats and journalists that point toward the nation moving forward on negotiations for a self-regulatory, non-statutory media body.

IPI Acting Director, Alison Bethel McKenzie, is in Lusaka to conduct a training session for senior journalists on media self regulation as a well as to attend meetings on the longstanding issue.

On Tuesday, Bethel McKenzie, U.S. Ambassador Mark C. Storella, and Embassy Public Information Officer Priscilla Hernandez, met with Minister of Information and Broadcasting Services Lt. Gen. Ronnie Shikapwasha and the new permanent secretary, Dr. Sam Phiri.

At issue was not only the advancement of negotiations between the media and the government on self regulation, but the role that NGOs and international organizations can play in training journalists in best practices and in how to best cover the elections planned for this year, an issue of immediate importance.

According to Information Minister Ronnie Shikapwasha, the government is interested in seeing Zambia media regulated under a self-imposed mechanism. He noted that the two sticking points continue to be the lack of professionalism among many journalists – both from the state-owned and private media – and instituting a self-regulatory system that all media will follow. Shikapwasha also challenged the international community to assist now in providing training of media on covering elections and also providing media monitoring during the elections.

U.S. Ambassador Storella reiterated the U.S. Embassy’s support for self regulation and its commitment to doing what it can to provide training opportunities for Zambia journalists. The U.S. Embassy sponsored Bethel McKenzie’s trip to Zambia for the self-regulation training.

During the current four-day visit, which began 13 February, Bethel McKenzie also met with several media outlets and with students at the University of Zambia School of Communications.

During a meeting with experienced journalists, some attendees feared that the government would not eventually embrace self regulation and would move in the next several months to institute some form of statutory regulation.

The chairman and co-chairman of the Society of Senior Zambian Journalists, however, said in a meeting with Bethel McKenzie that both sides will sit down in the next two weeks to negotiate with the SSZJ acting as mediators.

Ridgeway Liwena, head of the SSZJ, said the main sticking point lies in how strong the Zambia Media Council’s (ZAMEC) self-regulatory enforcement mechanism proves to be.

Regarding the equipment confiscated from Radio Lyambai in Western Province, in a brief conversation with Dickson Jere, special assistant to President Rupiah Banda, Jere said that he has no doubt that the equipment will be returned to the broadcaster. On 11 January, the Zambia government confiscated the equipment from the radio station on the grounds that its broadcasts on the Barotseland Agreement of 1964 were inciting violence. The station has remained off the air since then.

The recent visit follows an IPI mission to Zambia from 10 to 17 October 2010, during which the IPI delegation met with journalists from a wide range of public and private media, civil society organizations, and Information Minister Ronnie Shikapwasha. The full mission report can be downloaded from the <media 1877>IPI website at this link</media>.

The Zambian media fraternity and the government have been at an impasse over the issue of media regulation for nearly a year. Responding to calls from parliament for the media to regulate itself or be regulated by statute, a representative group from the media began meeting with the aim of creating a regulatory body.

At a February 2010 meeting, representatives from across the media decided that a non-statutory press council would be the best form of self-regulation, a decision that has since been termed the Fringilla Consensus. In April the same year, representatives from media houses and journalist organizations again gathered and universally adopted a code of ethics and constitution for the new regulatory body, the Zambia Media Council.

It was at this point that the Minister of Information withdrew his support for the process, which he said would result in an “unenforceable” regulatory mechanism. Dialogue between government and ZAMEC’s organizing body, the Media Liaison Committee (MLC), began again at the end of 2010 and has since moved forward, with the MLC and the Information Ministry agreeing to negotiations on the regulatory issue, with a group of senior journalists acting as mediators to the discussion.