Maravi

We all need a free press

We all need a free press
By The Post
Wed 15 Sep. 2010, 04:00 CAT

Listening to those coming from more developed parts of our world talking about press freedom reminds us how big a challenge this issue is. The challenge of press freedom is not just for developing countries but for the whole world. The public has a legitimate expectation to be well informed about what is happening.

The information that is given to the public enables society to understand its challenges and opportunities and to react to them accordingly.
It is not uncommon for people to blame the media for social ills when all the media does is reflect society to itself. We are to society what a mirror is to an individual.

No one in their right mind should blame the mirror for the way they look. The mirror simply shows you what you are. Indeed, this may be an oversimplification of the role that the media plays but in many ways, it illustrates the relationship.

The media exists, among other things, to facilitate society’s exercise of its freedom of expression. But life being what it is, there are those who are threatened by the right of others to express themselves. Such people or interest groups thrive on their ability to muzzle the public’s ability to articulate its hopes, desires and aspirations.

This class of people spends a lot of time and resources on distorting information and communication amongst people in order to retain control. For this to be possible, they ensure that the freedom and independence of the media is brutalised. This is because a free press is a danger to their scheme.

For that reason, such people want to ensure that they scandalise the media as much as possible in order to justify their activities which go against the norms of freedom of expression and its corollary of freedom of the press. As the saying goes, “give a dog a bad name and hang him”.

This is something that we see in our country today. There are those who like to blame all their misfortunes on the press. They forget that if they did not do the things that they have done or say the things that they have said, the press would have nothing to report. The irritations that they are suffering have nothing to do with the press per se but are a direct result of their actions or inactions.

There are those in government today who are working very hard to ensure that in one way or the other, we are harmed as a newspaper.

For some of us, they would even wish that we were harmed as individuals. What they forget is that we do not create the news that we write, they create it.

If they always acted in the best interest of the public that they claim to serve and behaved in the most responsible way, there would be nothing bad for us to write about them. To expect us to cover up their bad actions is to try to make us party to their misbehaviour.

We have seen people who have been in government and been very intolerant of our freedom as an independent newspaper running to us the day things change for them. The biggest culprit in this regard is Frederick Chiluba himself. When he was president, Chiluba tried everything to destroy us.

He never imagined that one day he would be out of power and need to communicate his views to the public without the media that he once controlled. At the time he was president, he ensured that his government controlled the state-owned media to the point where its message was totally distorted.

A time came when Chiluba no longer controlled state media, and where did he turn? It was to us. We have never liked Chiluba’s methods nor approved his message, but we respected his right to communicate with the public and carried his message.

This was respecting his freedom of expression which he never respected for others when he was president.
There is a lesson in this for people like Rupiah Banda and his government that is today also determined to employ all sorts of methods against us. It is clear they would like to destroy us whatever it takes.

Like Chiluba before them, they seem to believe that they will always have the influence on the state media that they have today. But the truth is a time is coming, and it may not be very long, when that won’t be so. Like their friends before them, they may need us to carry their message when they no longer control the state media. And we will.

But to them, all they see in us are enemies determined to destroy them. And yet all we do is report what is going on in our country and what our people feel about what they are doing. Even if they were to succeed in destroying The Post, that would not change the fact that our people have got legitimate grievances against their methods of running government.

It is Nelson Mandela who said: “None of our irritations with the perceived inadequacies of the media should ever allow us to suggest even faintly that the independence of the press should be compromised or coerced.” And Mandela gave a reason for his belief.

He said at another occasion that “a critical, independent and investigative press is the lifeblood of any democracy”. He also believed that “the press is one of the pillars of democracy”.

And because of this, he also believed that “a free press is preferable to a technically good subservient one”. Mandela was not saying this because the press had always been good to him. But his position is as a result of a recognition that information enhances good public discourse and decision making.

The glare of the media also develops a healthy awareness of the need to be accountable to the people those in power claim to serve. If their conduct was never publicised and information made available to the people, we have no doubt that the conduct of our public servants would spiral out of control.

In this same context, Mandela recognised that the media is a useful tool for delivering freedom to the people of South Africa. He said, after being released from prison in 1990, that “it was the press who never forgot us”. Mandela was saying this in recognition of the role that the press played in keeping his story and consequently the story of the suffering South Africans in the public domain.

But it is not difficult to understand why Mandela could take such a lofty view of the media. We say this because we recognise that he, like any other person, has had problems which, no doubt, he would have wished were kept away from the public such as his divorce. And yet he still comes out in defence and full support of a free press. Why? Mandela is a consummate public servant.

He has trained himself to recognise public interests even in the most difficult of circumstances. This is why he has no difficulty in championing the cause of press freedom because he recognises that the balance tilts in favour of the public. A leader whose interest is to serve the people has nothing to fear from a free press.

Of course, we recognise that the requirements of a free press place an equally important duty on our chosen profession to be responsible. And what this means is that we should always operate within the dictates of the law.

And when we fail, we should have the courage to admit that we have failed to act according to our duty and apologise accordingly. And where an apology is not sufficient, the law offers the aggrieved tried and tested legal avenues for redress.

This is why it does not make sense for people to try and introduce all sorts of novel schemes to muzzle the press under the pretext of protecting the public. Such schemes are not new. They have been tried before and they will continue to be tried by those who feel threatened by a free press.

The kind of hate that the government is trying to raise against a free press in our country is not good. It is neither in their interest nor anybody else’s. As we have warned them before, the kinds of things that they are doing will cause them to commit atrocities.

We see from the address of the Austrian President Heinz Fischer during the International Press Institute world congress that journalists are being killed for doing their job. In 2009, 110 journalists lost their lives whilst carrying out their profession. And in 2010, the death toll already stands at 52. One of the causes of these macabre statistics is intolerance and the lack of understanding that all the press does is report what is going on in society.

We have seen people like William Banda, Rupiah’s militia leader, issuing threats against us for doing our work, and yet this does not seem to bother Rupiah and those around him. They should not cheat themselves that they will get away with atrocities that they may commit because they are in power. Those who have thought like this have ended up paying a very heavy price.

Labels: PRESS FREEDOM

posted by MrK @ 3:12 AM