Soft censorship or indirect government censorship, includes a variety of actions intended to influence media—short of closures, imprisonments, direct censorship of specific content, or physical attacks on journalists or media facilities.
Publicidad Oficial focuses on financial aspects of official soft censorship in Mexico. In this country, the allocation of Government advertising is the more common tool to exert soft censorship and is an integral part of the country’s complicated media landscape. Absent precise and clear rules, it is a means to influence or even a tool to blackmail media owners and journalists.
Federal and local governments use official advertising to shape media outlets’ editorial line and push partisan agendas. Opaque and arbitrary allocation of official advertising constrains pluralism and a diversity of voices by selectively funding media outlets that support officials and their policies.
Read their latest report here: Buying Compliance:Governmental Advertising and Soft Censorship in Mexico
Twitter: @PubliOficial • @fundarMexico
The project was comprised of teaching individuals (mainly students) on how to do investigative journalism: classes on legislation, society etc. as well as writing courses.
The primary goal of the project was to identify and investigate corrupt practices in the process of issuing licenses in the targeted supervising agencies. The project team made official meetings with representatives of the target institutions: the Hygienic-Epidemic Inspectorate (HEI), the Fire and Emergency Safety Service (FES) and the Ministry of Health to present the project and negotiate the terms of project partnership. The main project outputs referred to: analyzes of citizens’ complains for illegally issued licenses; monitoring of the routine activity of the targeted supervising agencies;development of a legal data base the observed field and a hot phone line for signals; an active public awareness campaign for popularization of the investigated corrupt practices and the proposed measures for counteraction.
Goal: engaging and educating the young population regarding anti-corruption activities.
The aim of the project was to increase the transparency in the work of four municipal administrations in the region of Gabrovo by increasing their accountability and accessibility to citizens. The main activities included: 1. development and dissemination of an information bulletin “Dialogue”” and creation of a web site for the news campaign regarding the work of the targeted municipalities; 2. realization of a radio program dedicated to the project main goal; 3. realization of several conferences with representatives of the civil society, the business and local authorities on the issues of transparency and accountability of the municipal administration.”
The project aimed at increasing the capacity of the structures of the civil society in four municipalities in the fight against corruption. The capacity building refers to the capabilities of the civil society organizations to implement models and methods for monitoring and control over the public services provided by the municipal administrations . The project main activities included: 1. development of a local civil society partnership network; 2. survey of best practices in Bulgaria with regard to services of general interest provided by the local authorities 3. development of a web site for the partnership network in order to facilitate the communication between the target groups as well as to ease the monitoring process; 4. analyses of the existing deficiencies in the provision of services of general interest in the selected four municipalities and development of action plans for improvement; 5. realization of round tables with representatives from the civil society sector and the administration in order to discuss and improve the action plans; 6. monitoring over the implementation of the provided recommendations in the action plans; 6. analysis of the results of the project and dissemination of the good practices achieved.
Students of a course on investigative journalism published their own local newspaper in a suburb of Bratislava known for its intransparent public administration. AFP supported the students in writing articles and publishing the newspaper. The project was stopped because too much AFP capacity/specialized staff was needed.
The goals of the project were: 1) Raising awareness about the damage that corruption as well as perceptions about its presence in our society cause to the process of attracting new foreign investments in Kosovo; 2) Support of Kosovo institutions in drafting more sophisticated platform for creating a better conditions, comparable with the countries in the region, for foreign investments; 3) Mobilizing social capacities in treatment of this phenomenon and contribution for development of an atmosphere where fighting corruption is considered as necessity.
The aim of the project was to promote the fight against the corruption by improving adequate education and encouraging different organizations to cooperate and share information.
The goal of the project was to inform the rural population about their rights and possible ways of countering corruption through satiric songs called kolomiykas.
As part of the project, politicians were encouraged to publish their assets on a website (access with own password, accuracy of information cannot be verified but the public can check). Politicians could constantly update the information. The campaign targeted individual politicians, not parties, because voters can vote for individual candidates on the party lists (personalized vote).
The project consisted in the formation of a student theater group and a law group.
The goal of the project is to play part in fighting corruption in Lithuania by encouraging people to openly discuss about corruption and the ways to fight it, talk about known cases of corruption. The website includes a possibility to inform about giving/taking of bribes. People are using this opportunity, they are anonymously telling about the cases of corruption. These letters are then given to the Special Investigation Services.
In 8 pilot cities in different regions of Ukraine, the experts of the project together with local working groups implemented principles of efficient and ethical governance by establishing a local services registrar and developing informational cards concerning the certain services, by setting out ethical rules and behaviour rules of employees of local government, and creating ethics commisions and public councils on a local level.
The project consisted in the creation of a documentary movie, showing the process of taking bribes by police officers and further arrest procedure.
Together with 4 groups of traffic police, representatives of the NGOs informed drivers on legal responsibility for giving bribes to traffic policemen, and distributed printed materials of anti-corruption nature.
Together with the educational units of City Councils in three Ukrainian regions, an anti-corruption training course was developed for high-school students and pilot lessons were presented.
A research on public opinion was conducted in September 2002. Its results were presented in the media. The project raised the public awereness about corruption, promoted important values of transparency and dedication in fighting the poverty, influenced political parties to pay attention to corruption issues in their activities. The project put pressure on non transparent politicians and their political parties and supported the implementation of the national anti-corruption strategy. This project also reinforced the civil society organisations’ role in fighting corruption as well as the role of Transparency International in the monitoring of political system in Bosnia.
The project developed a guide is intended to help young people with a batch of information about corruption and serious consequences of this fact.
The publication is divided into two chapters.
The first chapter contains general information about what is corruption, what is not corruption, influence traffic, serious consequences of this fact, methods to prevent it, national and international anti-corruption documents etc.
The second chapter contains results, ideas and opinions of young people resulted from developing various activities in the project “Youth against Corruption”, local and final debates on ethics in education and public administration, the findings of a research study on the effects of corruption in education and the results of a survey on the perception of young people about corruption.
This guide has been published in the project “Youth against Corruption”, coordinated by the Pro Democracy Association in partnership with the Romanian Association for Debate, Oratory and Rhetoric, funded by the European Union, through the Transition Facility 2007/19343.01.11 – Strengthening support of civil society in the fight against corruption.
The project sought to generate attitudes of rejection to small corruption among a target group of 15-24 years old youth. The project was implemented by a group of NGOs including Transparency International Romania, ARIEL Children’s and Youth Theatre, Cable Communications Association, Oops Media, the Online Press Editors Association.
The project represented a public awareness campaign aimed at drawing public attention to corruption in the housing and municipal sector of the local economy. The campaign focused on tariff transparency, fulfillment of housing service contracts, subsidy abuse, etc. As in many other projects, a public advocate’s office was established, through which citizens were able to receive objective information and advice, as well as legal support in ongoing court cases. These legal offices also ensured that appropriate media coverage was given to the outcomes of pending legal proceedings. Information on relevant legal issues was also
made available by the public advocate office through the publication of Housing Services in Your Building, and My House is My Castle brochures.
Project aims :
To develop anti-corruption programme and methodical recommendations for the universities students from six Bosnia and Herzegovina universities;
To introduce developed programme and methodical recommendations to the Ministries of Education at all the BiH governance levels;
To test anti-corruption education strategies and methods at the universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina;
To support the programmes and standards of education by promoting democratic values and attitudes;
To demonstrate possibilities of fight against corruption;
To raise awareness among youth about the character, spread, and impact of corruption;
To establish networks facilitating the creation of a permanent international youth forum that ensures sustainability in the global fight against corruption by creatingm the next generation of corruption fighters;
To add new momentum to the existing anti-corruption movement.
Project objectives :
To train student’s and profesor’s further responsible for the dissemination activities;
To educate student’s about National Integrity System, and give the best input for political science, civic education, history, ethics, psychology and informations;
To introduce the concept of corruption, its causes and effects (knowledge);
To motivate student’s for the fight against corruption;
To lay the foundation for the recruitment of the next generation of corruption fighters by informing youth about the dangers of an omnipresent and unconstraint corruption for their future and showing them a way to contribute to initiatives that try to change this situation;
To endorse the creation of a youth-run global network against corruption that adds new impetus to existing anti-corruption initiatives through fresh and original perspectives and enthusiasm of the next generation;
To train them in possible counter measures through the participation in key workshops, online discussions and networks with civil society;
To design an action plan together with student participants that steers follow-up initiatives and creates sustainable networks among youth, TI, universities, local and regional organizations.
The project seeks to improve the role of the structures of the civil society in the city of Gabrovo in the formulation of policies and programs at municipal level. Some of the main project activities were: 1. realization of surveys aimed to define the main problems and deficiencies in communication between the local administration and the civil society at large; 2. monitoring activities regarding the work of the administration and development of precise recommendations for improvement; 3. organization and realization of round tables with representatives from the civil society and experts from the municipal administration aimed to encourage the dialogue and partnership between the two target groups; 4. realization of educational seminars regarding the civil control over the work of the administration; 5. realization of a regional information campaign “Civil society organizations – factor for increasing the transparency and accountability of the municipal administration””.; 6. development of precise recommendations for the public administration on how to incorporate good practices and procedures, which will ease the access to information for the citizens and the business and engage the civil society into the decision making process regarding the provision of services of general public interest.”
The campaign aimed at explaining the causes and consequences of small corruption, in order to support civic engagement in reporting and opposing corruption. The target group were 15-25 year olds.
