Trade unions
Since the 1990s, a group of journalists has set up a union called Syndicat National des Professionnels de la Presse (National Syndicate of Media Professionals - SNPP) which has the advantage of bringing together all categories and bodies of media and along with journalists. The SNPP is formed as a non-profit association, enjoying the decades-long support of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). But it remains very weakly structured because of the poor commitment of media professionals in defending their contractual rights. More than 90 percent of Congolese media professionals don’t have contracts and are not paid regularly.
As for the owners of press houses, they are equally united in some sort of unions structured as non-profit associations. The editors of the written media are grouped together in the National Association of Publishers of Congo (ANECO) and the owners of radio and television through the National Association of Private Audiovisual Enterprises (ANEAP). These two organisations are not effective because of their weak internal structure and because of their lack of vision. Only the association of associative and community radios, the Fédération des Radios de Proximité de la R.D. Congo (Federation of local radio stations of the Congo - PRPC) seems to constitute a real lever for the reform of the legal and institutional framework of the media in general as well as the professionalisation and the reinforcement of the capacities of its members in particular.