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 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 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 central goal of project was to make corruption transparent and provable and to encourage citizens to establish and use mechanisms of control over authorities to protect their rights.
The aim of the project was to raise citizen awareness on the Kosova C powerplant.
The project was designed as a competition: individuals and organizations could nominate a public institution/government body as positive or negative example for providing information based on the Freedom of Access to Information Act (FOIA); at the end of each year the “winner”” was given an award (http://www.infocin.sk/).”
The project aimed at:
– creating a virtual information center for monitoring the exploitation of natural resources in Romania;
– developing local civil society representatives’ capacity to actively participate in the development of regional strategies for the exploitation of natural resources;
– raising awareness among local and central authorities in resource rich areas about the necessity to design local sustainable development strategies for the exploitation of natural resources;
– advocating for transparency and accountability of central authorities’ management of natural resources.
The goals of the project were to publish information on projects funded within the foreign aid package, in regional newspapers and online media; to publish information on monitoring projects carried out within the framework of the TFAG Coalition; to publish abridged versions of the reports elaborated by the TFAG Coalition member organizations.
Further continuation of the previous year action. The same methods were applied: broad media campaign, distributing car stickers, promoting project logo etc.
Ruch Normalne Państwo and SAR continued on with their anti-corruption campaign after earning a success with a previous Warsawian action. That year the action (Give example – don’t take, take example – don’t give bribes) was country-wide and obtained lots of interest from media and other civil society organizations.
An overall program name, in reality it consists of different separate projects/campaigns. The main goal of the ‘Don’t give, don’t take bribes’ program was to raise awareness among the citizens that ‘petty corruption’, e.g. bribes to a road police, small gifts to doctors, bribes to ticket controlling services etc., is also corruption. It also attempted to change the perception that corruption is only a part of big business and draw attention to the fact that also regular people do encounter it and may act against this harmful phenomenon. The project aimed to create a positive campaign to show that one can say ‘no’ to corruptive activities and that indeed there are regular people, who do act against corruption. This undertaking also intended to reveal to people that any corruption undermines healthy functioning of the state and of every institution functioning within it.
The project was invented and run predominantly by two organizations: Ruch Normalne Państwo (Regular State Movement) and Stowarzyszenie Komunikacji Marketingowej SAR. The former organization is a voluntary civil society organization to which people donate their time and effort. They managed to find a large number of sponsors and thanks to that develop a country wide campaign in 2006, which lasted 3 months and was supported by multiple media (press, radio, TV). According to one of news articles the market value of the campaign in 2006 was ca. EUR 370.000!
The project had different editions starting with a single city campaign (in 2004 in Warsaw). Later on it pick up speed and scaled up onto the whole country. During annually organized ‘day without a bribe’ various happenings and actions take place across the whole country. Local NGOs and civil society organizations participate in them. Badges with campaign main slogan are distributed, as well as bumper stickers. Also envelopes are publicly burned to symbolize fight with corruption. Anti-corruption media campaigns ran for 2-3 months a year between 2006-2008. They included, besides already mentioned actions, TV and radio spots, billboard and citylight posters and running an internet website (www.niedajelapowek.pl).
Choroba brudnych rąk (Dirty hands disease) was an anti-corruption campaign initiated in 2004 and targeted at Warsaw. It consisted of displaying billboards and citylight posters with anti-corruption slogans and the logo of the program.
This is an annual one day, country-wide undertaking with anti-corruption happenings (23rd Feb).
The main objective of the project was to inform and educate the citizens of Albania on how the National Assembly works.
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.
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.
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.
Goal: engaging and educating the young population regarding anti-corruption activities.
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.
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.
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.
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 aim of the project was to realize a campaign against the wide spread practices of vote buying and the corruption in the election process at local level. In order to reach its target the project realized: 1. methodological training of local volunteers for monitoring the election process. 2. accumulation of data during the election process. 3. media monitoring regarding the election campaign 4. a sociological survey regarding the transparency and democracy of the election process 5. consultation, analyses and publication of the accumulated information from the realized activities. As a result the project developed a special Index for transparency in the financing of the local election campaign.
The primary goal of the project was to promote integrity in the election campaigns, to mobilize civil society organizations in order to exercise effective control and monitoring over the election campaigns in view of prevention of buying of electoral votes and to increase the level of integrity of the democratic process in general. The project objectives were: 1. to formulate adequate proposals for legislative amendments designed to restrict buying of electoral votes during the upcoming elections for MPs of the National Assembly and members of the European Parliament in 2009; 2. to mobilize the civil society structures for exerting an active public pressure on state institutions in order to adopt the civil society proposals for legislative amendments and to ensure fair democratic elections. 3. to advocate for civil and political intolerance towards the issue of buying of votes through focusing public attention on the importance of this phenomenon and organizing a civil society advocacy campaign for a fair and nonbiased electoral campaign. 4. to enhance the capacity of NGOs for exercising an effective monitoring over elections and to enhance the capacity of the state institutions for effective counteraction and restriction to the practices of vote buying.
