Each week in Pambazuka News carries stories about Media and Freedom of Expression. These tend to follow a predictable pattern: journalist arrested or killed, newspaper shut down, repressive laws hamper media freedom, state media displays appalling bias...

These are all important issues and they preoccupy African journalists and media freedom activists on a daily basis. Given the importance of a free flow of information in the struggle for social justice, these are things that concern broader sections of society too. But these are not the only significant issues that need to be addressed.

Who owns and controls the media in Africa? What is the impact of multinational media companies on Africa? What are the alternatives to the current choice between state-controlled media and media owned by private companies? What is the future of community media? Of alternative electronic media? Of book publishing?

Freedom of expression and freedom of information are important human rights because they provide a key to mobilising in defence of other rights. The Indian economist Amartya Sen has written that famine does not occur in countries with a free press. This is scarcely an exaggeration - the point being that the media act as a means of allowing information to flow and thereby holding governments to account.

Yet this classic "fourth estate" view of media freedom is looking distinctly tattered. In the United States, where the approach evolved, the private media have become concentrated into a small number of immensely powerful global media corporations, which have no interest in holding anyone to account. In Africa, the remnants of the old one-party media apparatuses are still going strong. Locally owned private media are emerging, but they too serve their own sectional interests.

In this issue, Richard Carver brings together articles that address these and other questions from a variety of different perspectives.