Objectives

The PRIMED programme has three main objectives:

1. Improve the capacity of participating media outlets to manage their organisations and deliver public interest content

Through a capacity-building package of business and management support tailored to each media partner and production support that strengthens audience engagement, relevance and trust, media will be better able to manage their organisations and deliver public interest content to their audiences. PRIMED will focus on building media capacity in areas such as audience development, revenue development, digital development and organisational management to help them to optimise revenues and improve their resilience to economic challenges, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Better coordinated and more impactful support for and defence of media freedom

PRIMED will provide technical assistance to local partners from across the media sector to strengthen their ability to advocate for change in the media environment and better defend media freedom. It will help them to identify priorities and opportunities for media reform and seek to strengthen their ability to work together and so magnify the impact of their advocacy in areas such as legal reform and improving regulatory standards. PRIMED will help build coalitions of individuals and organisations, including those representing the interests of disadvantaged groups, who have a common interest in supporting the viability of public interest media.

3. Create and share learning about what media support works and what doesn’t in different country contexts

There is a shortage of evidence of what types of media support are most effective in different environments. PRIMED will generate and disseminate learnings from its interventions in the three target countries and share them across the programme and with the wider media development community. By sharing insights into the effectiveness of different types of intervention, PRIMED will contribute to a more impactful and targeted global approach to media support. Its findings will be further informed by the experiences of existing media support projects in Iraq and Zambia, where different approaches to media development have been adopted by consortium partners.