Govt had hidden agenda on media regulation – Kapeya

Govt had hidden agenda on media regulation – Kapeya
By Ernest Chanda
Mon 11 Jan. 2010, 04:00 CAT

PARLIAMENTARY committee on information and broadcasting services chairperson Mwansa Kapeya has said government should now learn that laws targeted at particular institutions and individuals always backfire.

Commenting on government’s decision to bow to self- regulation of the media, Kapeya said it was clear from the beginning that the government had a hidden agenda. He said if the government were really everyone’s parent as they claimed, they should not have segregated among their own children.

“For me as a journalist who had practised for 38 years I have seen the dangers of suppressing institutions, especially the media. The danger is that when you aim a law at a certain organisation or individual, it backfires. If, for example you want to fix Mwansa Kapeya because he talks too much in Parliament you will fail. Mwansa Kapeya is just one individual from among millions of Zambians who contribute to the development of this country in their own ways,” Kapeya said.

“Equally, you cannot target a law at a particular media house just because you do not like what they write about you or any other person, it can’t work. To me this shows that from the beginning government had a hidden agenda. They had a certain media institution that they were targeting. This is a dangerous way of running a government.”

He said there should be no segregation of media houses because all of them contributed to democracy.
“If you have many children, as a parent it is wrong for you to segregate by loving some and hating others. If you do that then what kind of parent are you? It means you are not thinking properly because all of them are your children,” Kapeya said.

He advised the government to learn from all citizens, including those in the media.
He said everyone was a participant in good governance and checking government’s performance was one of the ways of participating.

“You see even in a home, you do not expect a child to be a child forever. One day they will grow and begin to advise their parents; that is exactly the role the media plays. We all know that the media are not there to bring down any government.

They are there to contribute to good governance by providing checks and balances. The best those in government can do is to abide by the rules of good governance, and then they will save their skins from media criticism. For now, I can say I hope our colleagues in government have learnt their lesson well that it does not pay to be petty,” said Kapeya.

In August last year, the government gave the media fraternity a six-month ultimatum in which to device a self-regulatory system or be regulated by a statutory body.

Towards the end of last year, both Lt Gen Shikapwasha and Vice-President George Kunda maintained that the government would go ahead and regulate the media if they failed to formulate a self-regulatory mechanism.

In the last sitting of Parliament, Vice-President Kunda informed the House during the Vice-President's question and answer session that the government had in fact already prepared a bill to regulate the media.

And last month, media bodies unearthed a scheme where Vice-President Kunda had drafted a Media Regulatory Bill whose contents were draconian to the media fraternity.

The media bodies had since declared Vice-President Kunda as the most hostile public official towards the media and vowed to take him head-on.

On Thursday last week, a selected team of MLC members held a consultative meeting with Lt Gen Shikapwasha in response to government’s plea for further dialogue.

It was at this meeting that Lt Gen Shikapwasha told the MLC that government had quashed the ultimatum given to the media fraternity to pave way for self-regulation.