God bless the media
God bless the mediaBy Editor
Sunday May 04, 2008 [04:00]
In life it is very important to be clear about things. And we would like our politicians, especially our parliamentarians and government ministers, to make their decisions on the basis of principles and reason. We don’t want them to be led by emotion and fears. They shouldn’t be manipulated into taking certain positions.
We therefore see no reason for anyone to try and comfort them that the media doesn’t intend to injure. We would like to remind our Minister of Information that we belong to the media and not to the insurance business and he must not think that support for the access to information bill should be a premium which would ensure any politician that they would be untouched by the media.
This seems to be an attempt to make a virtue out our inadequacies. We want our political leaders to make intelligent decisions. And it is the triumph of optimism of will over pessimism of intelligence that has always sustained us.
It doesn’t make sense to try and tie the issue of a press or media council to the enactment of an access to information law. The transgressions of any media or journalist should not be tied to this.
Our Minister of Information says our neighbours in Tanzania have a council which is responsible and if one of the media organisations transgresses, they can go to the council and appeal for regulation.
And the Minister is wondering where he should go if his rights are infringed. He says going to court may take 10 years and in the meantime something has been written about him and he is divorced at home. He asks if he is going to be compensated for being divorced.
Actually, when one critically examines the example our minister has given, one will realise that falsities that have usually led to divorces are not in the media; they lie elsewhere. They are usually found in the unpublished or unbroadcast words.
They are not part of the libel but slander. So if this is his concern, then he should look for a council of some form that will regulate slander since he doesn’t want to spend 10 years in court.
No one should be opposed to self-regulation. It is not possible to practice journalism without one form or another of self-regulation. Every journalist and every media house regulates itself in one form or another. Self-regulation does not necessarily mean belonging to a media council of some form.
We have adequate defamation laws in this country and we will not run away from them by creating all sorts of kangaroo courts and trying to force citizens to join such syndicates. If our court processes take too long to complete, it is the duty of our legislators and those in government to ensure that these processes are shortened by providing our judiciary with necessary capacity – financial and otherwise.
And it is not only politicians who are affected by libel. Even us journalists sometimes have our reputations injured by fellow journalists and their media organisations. The editors of this newspaper have had litigation against the Daily Mail, the Weekly Angel, Today, among others, and won.
The cases have taken long but they were eventually closed and judgment passed. No one should injure the reputation of others with impunity.
If we publish anything legally offensive against anyone, they have every right to seek redress in our courts of law. Just the same way if one is slandered by another citizen, they have every right to sue for slander. Usually there are no shortcuts to justice.
We have no problems with a media council as long as it is a voluntary one. And being voluntary means that we have a choice either to join it or to stay away from it. This choice must be respected otherwise the whole thing becomes mandatory.
And as we have stated before, one cannot in one breath advocate for a non-mandatory media council and at the same time try to force everyone to take up membership in it. Again, there is need to be clear about things.
In any given discipline, there are people who pursue it with honour and with decency and there are people who don’t.
To say that the media are terrible is not quite accurate or fair.
To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity, over error and oppression.
The press should be considered not as the fourth branch of the government but as an essential counterweight to the government, the basic check against abuse of official power.
Both freedom of speech and press freedom often provoke public and political controversy, but experience shows again and again that when freedom is diseased, the only cure is more freedom.
A newspaper should tell the truth as only intellectual honesty can discern the truth. It should do what is in conscience needful and right.
No one should be able to pull the curtains of secrecy around decisions which can be revealed without injury. And we will never forget what President Levy Mwanawasa had to say on this in 2002.
When we obtained the Zamtrop Account through a court order following an application we had made in court, we asked our lawyers to go and see President Mwanawasa and find out from him if there was anything in these accounts whose exposure would jeopardise national security so that we could avoid doing so.
The President’s response was simply that there’s nothing of national security in theft, theft could not be hidden behind national security and we should use the accounts as we deem fit. This was our President’s response. Who can disagree with this? Why can’t we use it as a benchmark when looking at our access to information bill?
The truth is, if you don’t like what you are seeing in the news, you probably don’t like what is going on in society right now. If we don’t mirror our communities as they exist, then we may not have thriving and growing newspapers.
People believe that having freedom of expression is a natural phenomenon. It’s not. It is a result of intense care and vigilance.
The unregulated voice, the unregulated media isn’t as dangerous to the public as is the silenced voice.
We all want to do right and do well. But if you don’t do well, you are not going to be in a position to do right.
In our popular discussions, unwise ideas must have a hearing as well as wise ones, dangerous ideas as well as safe, unZambian as well as Zambian.
The need to protect what we detest is the reason freedom of the mind both exists and remains under siege.
Power corrupts, and there is nothing more corrupting than power exercised in secret.
The things we are seeking are about freedom and tolerance – to believe, speak, publish, congregate and lobby as you see fit, while allowing others to do likewise, even people whose expressions you find abhorrent.
It may not be pleasant to see the truth, but we can assure you that the alternative is virtual slavery.
It seems that some government officials never learn that the cover-up can be worse than the underlying conduct.
In every country, press freedom boils down to a three-way deal between state power and popular instinct and the media’s muscle. The freedoms we are seeking are not so that we can freely praise and comfort our public officials. We are seeking them so that we can freely criticise our public officials.
A free press is not necessarily an angelic press. Therefore, tolerance for a free press is the touchstone for a democratic society. We say this because speech is the mark of humanity.
Standing up for what is right isn’t always popular.
The press has a responsibility not only to report the truth, but to do so with a sense of accountability and decorum. Freedom of speech is not about good speech versus bad; it is about who holds the power to decide which is which.
To us, it’s clear that only a strong and secure democracy can guarantee the fullest and more free exchange of ideas, no matter how much those ideas hurt or incite. You cannot have a democracy and you cannot have a community if you do not have a way to share ideas.
And the right to express yourself is not something that is inherently part of being a journalist; it’s part of being a human being.
And we don’t think it’s fair to blame press freedom or access to information when someone makes a fool of himself in public.
As a newspaper, we have to stand up for what is right and not worry about what is politically feasible. And surely, the glory of journalism is its transience.
We think the great thing about the freedoms we are talking about is that they extend to everyone, the wise and the foolish.
For this reason, the best we can say is simply to ask God to bless the media.
Labels: FREEDOM OF INFORMATION BILL, MEDIA, MIKE MULONGOTI, PRESS
posted by MrK @ 5:16 AM
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