How can podcasts be used as a tool for (media) sustainability, advocacy and training? #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister discussed these and other issues with Director of Volume, Paul McNally. This episode was recorded during a three-day virtual conference on the ‘Future of Journalism Education in Southern Africa’, jointly hosted in December 2020 by the Namibia Media Trust, DW Akademie and MISA Malawi. Is podcasting taking off in Africa? Let us know what you...

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a full-blown pandemic in Namibia. How Namibian media cover the scourge of GBV is one of the most urgent problems we face as a country. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister speaks with two powerful young women, youth leader Bertha Tobias, and journalist Ndapewoshali Shapwanale, who were themselves involved in the recent #ShutItAllDown protests where mainly women took the street in protest against GBV and femicide. Together they examine media coverage of the GBV and...

For ordinary folk, it’s often difficult to know what’s fact and what’s fiction in this post-truth world. So media literacy, the ability of people to critically use media, plays an essential role in helping them navigate the information minefields that are out there. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister sits down with Jan Lublinksi, head of policy and learning at the Deutsche Welle Akademie and their coordinator for Media and Information Literacy (MIL) in southern Africa, Lizette Feris - to talk about...

Self regulation is a pledge by quality conscious media professionals to maintain a dialogue with the public - a good way of describing the endeavor by newsrooms to abide by a code of ethics and be accountable to the public. With the formation of the Editors' Forum of Namibia, a Media Ombudsman was appointed to arbitrate complaints by members of the public who felt they hadn’t been dealt a fair hand by the fourth estate. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister sits down with Namibia’s Media Ombudsman Dr...

Access to information (ATI) has been described as the ‘mother of all rights’, and there’s been a sustained push by civil society organisations since 2016 to get an ATI law in place in Namibia. We finally have a bill, due to come up in the next session of parliament, which we hope will soon become law. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister speaks with feminist, gender and human rights activist Linda Magano Baumann and Augetto Graig, a journalist with Republikein and member of the steering committee of...

It is only through an independent trade union that journalists will have a collective voice that can speak for them, independent of both governments and employers. Finally, a Namibia journalists union is on the cards in the form of the newly registered Media Professionals Union of Namibia (MPUN). #FreeSpeak's Gwen Lister hosts MPUN interim chairperson Jemima Beukes and working group member Kelvin Chiringa for a discussion on the union’s aims and objectives.

In the midst of a deepening economic crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and shocking WFP prognosis that two thirds of Zimbabwe's population will need food aid by month-end, President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his Zanu-PF party are intent on further suppressing free expression. In his own words, he’s intent on ‘flushing out’ opponents of the regime, calling them ‘bad apples’ and ‘rogue elements in league with foreign detractors’. Journalists exposing corruption and many citizens...

What can be done when public trust in media is severely eroded and what are the consequences for democracy? It seems this worryingly negative trend across the continent in recent years may currently be in reverse but it’s too early to celebrate yet because of very complex African attitudes to freedoms, notably press freedom. This, according to findings of Afrobarometer, a Pan African series of national public attitude surveys on democracy, governance and society. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister...

How are the media – online and mainstream – covering issues relating to the Covid-19 pandemic; what news should be online and what not and where can we find quality rather than the quantity of information? How does or should legacy media reflect and report on what’s happening online – for example, mainly youth centered campaigns around the call to legalise abortion, petitions for a register of sex offenders, etc. Do newspapers, radio and TV have their fingers on the online pulse or are they...

Arguably incidents of racism and tribalism shouldn’t still be happening in Namibia 30 years after independence and the fall of apartheid. But it’s almost like we’ve simply brushed the subject under the carpet through the policy of national reconciliation pretending it will all just go away. Clearly, we’ve still got a long way to go in fully addressing deep wounds and divisions in our ethnically diverse country. Gwen Lister and lawyer and human rights expert, Toni Hancox, Director of the Legal...

Online platforms have given people voice they never had before the onset of the digital era, and while these fora are sometimes used as an an amplifier of progressive views opposed to racism and injustice, among others, they also serve as a platform for hate speech and insult. Gwen Lister and Dr. Admire Mare discuss these issues in the context of the #BlackLivesMatter and #GallowsMustFall campaigns.

How are Namibian newsrooms, their managers and editors, adapting (or not) to the hard new realities for the print media? And are young journalists being treated badly in the process? This is the focus of today’s Freespeak podcast, and guests, Max Hamata, owner and editor of Confidente newspaper, and Ronelle Rademeyer, news editor of Die Republikein and Secretary General of the Editors Forum of Namibia (EFN)weigh in on this topical discussion.

Gwen Lister hosts Johnathan Beukes, online editor at the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and Jemima Beukes, senior reporter at the Sun newspaper, for a discussion about current constraints - both internal and external - faced by media in general, and journalists in particular.

Fiscal transparency is absolutely crucial during times of national emergency, says the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) who recently launched the findings of the 2019 Open Budget Survey. The survey measures and compares transparency, public participation, and oversight of a country’s budget process. Gwen Lister sat down with the IPPR team, Graham Hopwood and Martha Nangolo, to unpack the findings and their significance for Namibia.

Are media getting it right in terms of covering the Covid-19 pandemic? What is the media doing about the tsunami of lies and disinformation that proliferates at this time, especially online? These are the issues that Gwen Lister tackles as she sits down with Mahlatse Mahlase - Group Editor-in-Chief of Eyewitness News and chairperson of the South African Editors Forum, and Peter Deselaers - journalist and Country Representative of DW Akademie in Namibia.

Algorithms know a lot more about us than we know about them. The algorithm is a lot more than just predicting things we want to see and hear online, and the general public knows almost nothing about them, and even less about the engineers and coders who are creating them behind the scenes. Gwen Lister and co-founder of AlgorithmWatch, Lorenz Matzat, shed light on the characteristics and effects of complex algorithmic decision-making processes on the general public.

How can journalists do better? Gwen Lister sits down with senior journalists Mathias Haufiku and Tileni Mongudhi to talk about the significance of good journalism in the eye of the storm.

Namibian youth have strong opinions about where Namibia is today at 30 years of independence. Gwen Lister sits down with Ndapewoshali Shapwanale and Nafimane Halweendo to talk about problems and solutions and what the youth can do to make ours a success story.

FreeSpeak tackles the recent announcement by Namibia's Minister of Information and Communication Technology of a decision by Cabinet to investigate ways to regulate social media mainly because of concern for teenage pregnancies and to mitigate this.

The NMT celebrates World Radio Day 2020 and sits down with veteran Zambian journalist and radio founder, Mike Daka, to discuss how to overcome the challenges of sustaining good journalism for local communities.

@NamMediaTrust’s @GwenLister1and @TheNamibian editor @TangeniAmupadhi talk about the media’s perceived anti-government bias and the agenda against the media, all in the context of the still-unfolding #fishrot scandal. Here’s our podcast

The NMT's Gwen Lister in discussion with investigative journalists Shinovene Immanual and Helgi Seljan on the biggest investigative journalism exposés to hit Namibia and Iceland, the #fishrot scandal

The NMT's Gwen Lister in discussion with Frederico Links on Disinformation and Elections in Namibia, ahead of the launch of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) report, 'Fake News & Namibian Elections'.