Report: Seminar on Governance and Media Reform in Sri Lanka and the Commonwealth

The trigger for this seminar had been the publication earlier in the year of the book ‘Embattled Media: Democracy, Governance and Reform in Sri Lanka’. One of the main aims of the book was to analyse issues of media practice and regulation - both abuses and the potential reform of those abuses – in the specific circumstances of Sri Lanka. The seminar had a broader aim to explore and compare thinking and practice affecting media and journalism in countries with other legal and constitutional foundations and cultural inheritances. We aim to go beyond the parameters of the book and hear from speakers with wide experience of the dilemmas facing policy makers in high income, middle income and low income countries. The three distinguished speakers in the seminar’s second session will reflect on best practice in Commonwealth countries regarding the promotion of media development and the safeguarding of media freedoms.