The Media Reform Lanka Initiative Website Launch

The Media Reform Lanka Initiative, based at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, has launched its website http://mediareformlanka.com/.

The Initiative aims to broaden and inform the perspectives in which media law, media policy and regulation are debated and determined in Sri Lanka and the wider South Asian region. It is led by Colombo-based senior legal advocate and media columnist Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena, in association with Dr David Page and Dr William Crawley, Senior Fellows at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and Co-Directors of the Media South Asia Project. Their work to date has generated two core papers on Media Freedom and Social Responsibility in Sri Lanka: A Review of the Legal, Institutional and Educational Framework Relating to the Print Media (co-authored by Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena & Gehan Gunetilleke) and on the Political Economy of the Electronic Media (co-authored by the late Tilak Jayaratne and Sarath Kellapotha).

Diamond Jubilee Seminar ‘The monarchy, the Commonwealth and the media’, 20 March 2012

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies is pleased to announce the second seminar in its Diamond Jubilee Series: ‘The monarchy, the Commonwealth and the media’ will be held on 20 March 2012.

The shedding of media light on the mystery of the monarchy has sometimes been engineered and sometimes accidental – but always remorseless. Alongside the triumphs, there have been the dark days of the death of Princess Diana, ‘Annus Horribilis’, and the hacking of royal phones. This seminar asks: can the monarchy survive its dealings with the media – or is that relationship the secret of its survival? The panellists discussing the relationship between the monarchy and the media will be Charles Anson CVO (former Press Secretary to the Queen), Tom Corby MVO (former Court Correspondent of the Press Association), and Keshini Navaratnam (former BBC World TV presenter).

The seminar will take place on Tuesday 20 March at 5.30pm in The Senate Room, Senate House, Malet Street WC1E 7HU. All are welcome; the seminar is free to attend. Booking is essential as places are limited, please email chloe.pieters@sas.ac.uk

The Diamond Jubilee Seminar Series was launched by the Chancellor of the University of London, the Princess Royal, on 11 January 2012. The series, which marks the Diamond Jubilee Year by exploring the relationship between the monarchy and the Commonwealth, will run throughout 2012. Information on forthcoming seminars will be posted to the Institute’s events pages.

New archives list - Graham Mytton papers - the media in Africa

Another new archives list recently added to the ULRLS Archives Catalogue is the papers of Graham Mytton (ICS115).

As part of his postgraduate studies in the mass media, Graham Mytton undertook practical research into the media in Tanzania, spending a year as a research associate at University College, Dar es Salaam in 1967-1968. After completing his studies in Manchester in 1970, Mytton became the Zambia Broadcasting Services Research Fellow at the Institute for African Studies, University of Zambia, a post he held until 1973. Much of the material in this collection was accumulated during these research projects. 

Mytton later worked for the BBC, eventually becoming Controller of Marketing for the BBC World Service. He is now an independent market and audience research consultant and trainer.

The archive collection is comprised of papers accumulated by Graham Mytton in the course of research into the press and broadcasting in Tanzania and Zambia. The material comprises files on the press in Tanzania, including notes of interviews with staff, readership statistics and other literature about newspapers; files concerning broadcasting in Tanzania, including copies of relevant speeches in Parliament, material on the Ministry of Information, Tanganyika Broadcasting Corporation and Radio Tanzania, and papers on educational and adult education broadcasting; files concerning broadcasting in Zambia, including documents on Zambia Broadcasting Services, educational and rural broadcasting; papers for the Ninth Commonwealth Broadcasting Conference in Kenya; and some miscellaneous items.

The Library also holds Mytton's book published in 1983, entitled Mass communication in Africa , copies of reports on the mass media audience survey he carried out in Zambia, and interviews by Mytton with members of the TANU Publicity Section.