Maravi

KK’s sermon on the media

KK’s sermon on the media
By Editor
Sun 25 Oct. 2009, 04:00 CAT

When Dr Kenneth Kaunda speaks on any subject or issue, we pay a lot of attention to what he says. We meditate deeply over what Dr Kaunda says on any issue. This is so because this comrade has struggled a lot, has fought a lot, has experienced a lot, has suffered a lot and indeed he has seen a lot.

Dr Kaunda yesterday made a number of observations on the operations of the media generally and in particular in our country. And we agree with everything that he said.

This comrade has travelled 360 degrees on this score. There are times when he was persecuted by the media and there have also been times when his own government was the persecutor of the media.

During the independence struggle, the colonial press tried to create a monster out of Dr Kaunda by misrepresenting him as a human being and by attempting to distort his very noble cause. In short, Dr Kaunda and his comrades were not fairly and objectively covered by the colonial press.

There were attempts to set up media outlets that were supportive of Dr Kaunda and his cause. This media also had its own limitations. It was fair to Dr Kaunda and the independence struggle but it was a biased press whose objectivity in certain respects was questionable.

It did not take long after independence for Dr Kaunda’s government and party to assume hegemony over the media. That media covered them extensively and probably to the exclusion of their political opponents. It was a biased media that Dr Kaunda’s government ran. And it is this same media that successive governments since 1991 when Dr Kaunda left office have inherited. And they have run it the same way.

After Dr Kaunda left office, the media that he once controlled and used as a sword and shield was turned against him. It was used to try and discredit and humiliate him. The only media that came to his defence and that covered him fairly and objectively was the media that was outside his control when he was in power; the media that was opposed to his government. This is the media that sustained Dr Kaunda throughout the 10 years Frederick Chiluba was president of the Republic. It is also the same media that solidly defended his integrity throughout Levy Mwanawasa’s seven years as president.

Today there seems to be some favourable coverage of Dr Kaunda from the government media. It is not difficult to guess why. It is simply because of the good relation Dr Kaunda has with Rupiah Banda and his government. It is also because today Dr Kaunda does not publicly utter a word that is critical of Rupiah and even of his friends like Chiluba. This is the only reason the government media today appears to be favourable to Dr Kaunda. Clearly, Dr Kaunda has been subjected to everything good the media can do to an individual and to everything bad the media can do to a human being at various stages in his life.

We approach the issues Dr Kaunda has raised in a critical spirit, with a sense of history and renewed faith in the values that, for those who have become disenchanted in recent times, have become less important and bothersome.

However, we are very impressed by Dr Kaunda’s persuasive dissertation, an anthological poem, on the media and his reflections on its role.

The observations made by Dr Kaunda have reaffirmed our convictions on media issues and given us more arguments for our enthusiasm to defend the freedom of the press.

We hope that the Zambian people will find Dr Kaunda’s observations a stimulus to reflection and encouragement to preserving their hope in the cause of a free press that has never ceased to be legitimate.

Dr Kaunda’s observations have also helped us by confirming the need for the self-criticism that we have engaged in – or are obliged to engage in – in every reversal and in the shadows.

Effectively, Dr Kaunda has brilliantly indicated to us that it is possible to fight for a free and independent press that is fair, objective, just, while at the same time defending the dignity of every individual from being violated by such a press. We can achieve both without compromising on the other. This is so because the two are not mutually exclusive but are like two different sides of the same coin.

But Comrade KK will agree with us, given his experience in the independence struggle, that it is very difficult to establish a press that is truly fair and objective under a political environment that is not free and fair. The colonial press was a press of a highly divided society, a society of the oppressed and the oppressors.

Part of the media sided with the oppressors while a small portion of it threw its weight behind the oppressed. In any highly divided society, even just between the poor and the rich, the weak and the powerful, it is very difficult to find a media that is not divided along those lines.

In a society that is divided on the lines of justice and injustice, there will be part of the press that defends and advances justice while the other defends and promotes the interests of injustice. It is extremely difficult to maintain neutrality between justice and injustice, wrong and right, humaneness and barbarism, plunder and honest public service.

We can easily be enticed to read fairness and objectivity of the media as meaning parity between justice and injustice, between honesty and dishonesty. Injustice must be fought. Justice must be defended. Dishonesty must be exposed and denounced. Honesty must be commended and promoted or encouraged.
In a country where fairness, fraternity and honest public service exists or is truly encouraged, a free press can take more forms of expression. In a country in which dishonest and corrupt public service is the order of the day, in a country where the hegemony of plunders reigns and people’s independence and good governance is threatened, a free press won’t have many forms of expression.

If all this sounds too abstract, let us then state it in simpler terms. We would hope that the media in Zambia develops a greater professional integrity and responsibility. Be critical guardians of democracy and freedom, but respects its readers or audience and subjects, the targets of their criticism and reporting, and above all else, its own integrity as a social institution. And this includes both the privately owned and state owned and government controlled media.

In the end, it demeans all of us in the nation if one picks up a newspaper and disbelieves its stories at the start, waiting for further proof before you give credence to it. Or, if one detects basic flaws in stories and reports that could have been easily corrected by good basic journalism and editing.
What Comrade KK has done is to reiterate the commitment to the defence of a free, independent and robustly critical press that has been stated over and over that the freedom of the press and its inalienable right to be our critic and mirror are under threat in this country.

There is nothing wrong in taking vigorous issue with the media when one regards it as appropriate without that in any way implying a right on one’s part to infringe on the freedom of the press. We all have to do our best to ensure that journalism of quality plays its role in the future of our country by helping to create an environment under which it is possible to realise such a media.

Again, there is need to remind ourselves of an old saying that freedom and order are constantly in tension with one another in society. Order without freedom leads to totalitarianism. Freedom without order leads to anarchy. It is also said that societies recover quicker from too much freedom than they do from totalitarianism. We need to bear this in mind at all times in all our efforts to reform the media. And Zambia should put the freedom of its press and media at the top of its priorities as a country striving to build an open and more democratic, more just, fair and humane society.

As Nelson Mandela, KK’s comrade, once put it: “None of our irritations with perceived inadequacies of the media should ever allow us to even suggest faintly that the independence of the press could be compromised or coerced. A bad free press is preferable to a technically good subservient press.”

Labels: KENNETH KAUNDA, MEDIA, ZAMCOM

posted by MrK @ 6:05 PM