The Forum meets quarterly and most meetings include an invitation to a relevant stakeholder unless an internal workshop is being held. Since 2005 we have met with the following organisations:

In 2003 a stakeholder survey was commissioned in order to identify which issues were key.

The Media CSR forum: key issues for the media industry

Following this work we used facilitated workshops to focus down on the two or three areas that we considered to be the most pertinent and best dealt with on a collective basis. These became Media Literacy and the Measurement and Reporting of CSR for the Media Sector.

Measurement and Reporting

A sub group of members looked at the progress of CSR reporting and specifically at the use of indicators relevant for the media sector. Much of the Group's early discussion was concerned with materiality; attempting to understand which topics were truly significant for the sector and – within this – which were both significant and unique to media companies. As part of this exercise Aegis developed an on-line survey which the majority of members completed. This tested a wide range of possible indicators, inviting members to rate their importance to their own organisation, and the extent to which they currently reported on the topic. At the same time, the group heard from others who were developing indicator sets for the sector, including the research team at Goldman Sachs and the GRI.

The conclusions from the group were as follows:

Ultimately, the view was that there was little marginal benefit from a sector specific framework, largely because of the rapid progress made by individual members and others in reporting and analysing the sector in other ways.

Media Literacy

A Media Literacy sub group was also formed and one of the group's first actions was to research and establish a working definition for the topic. We found that there was broad agreement that being 'Media Literate' has three components:

We concluded that this is a critical and specific CSR topic for the media sector, which presents a number of very significant issues, for example:

The working group considered the most effective way to address these needs collectively. We researched existing work in both the UK and the US. The group also joined the Associate Parliamentary Media Literacy Group, and met numerous times with the Media Literacy Task Force and with Ofcom.

Whilst the group considers the issues and opportunities around Media Literacy to be substantial and real and significant progress has been made, particularly in the educational arena, there was a feeling that society and business at large are currently unaware of the issue. They are also unaware of the potential impact a media illiterate society could have on civil participation and even on democratic process. One could compare the issue to the state of awareness on Climate Change in the early 1990s.

We concluded that the best way Forum members could contribute, would be to stimulate the debate, using our reach and expertise to challenge the public to evaluate the information they receive on a daily basis. In November 2006 EuroRSCG Fuel, a global advertising agency agreed to develop the initial concepts for a campaign to do just this and simultaneously Harvard PR (part of the Bell Pottinger Group) agreed to support the campaign with relevant public relations work. The campaign is due for launch in 2008 and has support from a number of Forum members.

We believe that by stimulating such a debate we can encourage the public to become more critically aware and to engage more readily with new media. There is also an opportunity to demonstrate the processes and regulatory frameworks behind the British media and share with the public at large the mechanisms by which factual, opinion, entertainment and advertising media are put together and their respective roles within the broader spectrum of media choices.

The following useful links provide a little more context:

Ofcom
NIACE
The Charter for Media Literacy
The European Commission Media Literacy Page