New policy and practice fields need intellectual energy; otherwise they don’t go anywhere quickly. Those promoting the new fields need to be producing justificatory essays, applied research, good practice manuals, policy briefs, evaluations, articles in refereed journals...and blogs too! They should be bombarding policy makers with all kinds of output of good quality; and they should be organizing the field as a serious discipline. I am happy to see that the role of the media in development is attracting more intellectual energy. So, yesterday here at the World Bank, my colleague, Kreszentia Duer, presented a major contribution to the field that she and others had been working on for about five years: Broadcasting, Voice, and Accountability: A Public Interest Approach to Policy, Law, and Regulation.

The book is a very practical guide that offers a coherent view of broadcast interventions, what it means to have a plural and diverse broadcast sector and how to work through some of the complex regulatory issues involved. It has boxed examples from around the world, checklists, a toolkit and a sound bibliographical annex. Who is it for? The best way I can describe the target audience is this. For whatever reason you have a chance to help transform the broadcasting sector in Gogoma Republic. Political will is not an issue. What you now need to do is actually do it, design a regulatory system, set it up, make it work and so on. This excellent book is what you need next to you. You don't read it like a novel. You go back to it again and again as you work through the issues one after the other.

One of the great strengths of the book is that Tia assembled some of the very best people in the field on the issues covered: Steve Buckley, Toby Mendel, Sean O Siochru, Monroe Price and Marc Raboy. That quality shows throughout the text.

Finally, away from all the practical content there is plenty to argue about here. The authors make a big play about the 'public interest' approach to broadcasting.  The normative underpinnings discussed in Chapter 1 will not please everyone in terms of philosophical rigor but the authors claim not to be prescriptive. Whether it is possible to be normative and not prescriptive is something that I leave you to argue with the authors about. Having said that, I salute this contribution and wholeheartedly recommend it.