This book, published by the Open Society Foundation and written by various organisations, offers insignt into the South African Media Statutory Bodies.  The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the Universal Services Agency, and the Media Development and Diversity Agency are explored in terms of their mandates.  The Media Monitoring Project conducted the research and wrote the analysis of the SABC.

Placed here with the kind permission of the Open Society Foundation.

• There were more male sources (60%) than female sources (40%) in the items that were monitored;
• SABC 3 had the highest ratio of female to male sources with 60% sources being female. The Weekender, on the other hand, lacked any female sources in stories that related to the Campaign and woman and child abuse;
• At 17% each, the most common roles for sources was that of “Government officials and politicians” and “Civil Society”;
• Where the sex of the journalist was known, 62% of the times the stories were written by female journalists;
• Topics that related to gender-based violence accounted for 36% of all stories monitored. Child abuse stories accounted for 16% of all the stories;
• 16 Days Campaign or campaigns relating gender issues accounted for 13% of the stories;
• The most supported journalistic ethic was “Woman and child abuse are fundamental human rights violations”. The most violated principle was “Minimise harm”;
• 3% of stories made a link between HIV/Aids and woman and child abuse
• 56% of all stories monitored mentioned the 16 Days Campaign

The Media Monitoring Project pioneered a best practice approach to working with children as monitors and with journalists as mentors in a project called the Children’s Media Mentoring Project. MMP worked together with the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (IAJ) and Agência de Notícas dos Direitos da Infância (ANDI: a Brazilian news agency focused on children’s rights). This report describes the project activities and looks at The Star newspaper as a case study on the effectiveness of the MMP's approach. This  file is  2MBs. 

The 50th year anniversary of the 1956 women's pass march offered media an opportunity to educate and inform South African's of the role played by women in the struggle against apartheid. Diverse women featured in coverage including:
* The stories of heroines, leaders and activists;
* gender-based violence covered
* Successful women; and
* The Magogos.

The 2006 Local Government Elections demonstrated many of the patterns from past of election coverage, with the elections attracting much media attention, but event-based reporting predominating. The majority of the coverage was national, rather than local, as may be expected in a local election. Beeld was the exception in this regard.

The fairness of coverage was compromised by media not setting their own agenda, but in allowing national party figures to do so. While national political figures featured largely, local issues only made the news mainly through public service delivery protests.

Women featured during this period in the media as a result of party manifestos to promote women within their ranks, not from a media strategy to seek out and discover female sources.

Race featured narrowly in the media, based on party announcements and perceived race-based voting.