Since 1989, governments and foundations have invested heavily in media assistance in emerging democracies. By one 2004 estimate, the spending at the beginning of that decade was in the neighborhood of $1 billion annually. What has been the impact of these programs? How have they affected the work of journalists, their media organizations, the field of mass communication and the society? Media indicators and other political and economic indices have been used to assess the impact of those assistance programs. How valuable have these assessments been?

Conveners of this theme are Lee Becker and Tudor Vlad, Director and Associate Director of the Cox Center at University of Georgia.