Address the real issue, Prof. Tambulasi
Hon. Folks, the principal of Chancellor College, Prof. Richard Tambulasi has distanced Chanco TV and Chanco Community Radio from the Mount Soche Declaration.
His argument is that the radio and TV in question belong to a public institution and do not therefore “fit in the private media category” that issued the communiqué.
Wrong, Mr. Principal. The communiqué was jointly issued and signed for by media houses represented at the Mount Soche meeting convened by Media Council of Malawi (MCM) and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Malawi Chapter), umbrella bodies.
If the Chanco TV and community radio which, as you say, belong to a public institution, ended up being co-signatories of the communiqué with private media, it’s only because they all belong to one or both of these umbrella bodies.
But media houses in Malawi also have another point of convergence which is larger than any other authority on the land—Section 36 of the Constitution. It provides for free press and, if read together with Section 15(1), the supreme law makes it incumbent particularly on government to accord the media “the fullest possible facilities for access to public information.”
The Mount Soche meeting unanimously noted government machinations to stifle press freedom as exemplified by hiding vital information on APM’s trip to the US for the UN General Assembly, APM’s hostility to some media houses and convening a presidential press conference and political rally the same time and place.
Many times in the past APM has accused the media of criticising government at all times, deliberately ignoring or downplaying its achievements.
Note that wherever free press exists, this is generally the concern of those in government probably because free press is also invariably known by its functional terms as the” Fourth Estate” (after Executive, Legislature and Judiciary) or the “watchdog “.
By the term Fourth Estate, the emphasis is on media role in providing information which can used to hold office bearers in the three arms of government, including the President, accountable to the people, the ultimate stakeholders in any democracy.
By watchdog, the emphasis is on the investigative role of the media, particularly the muck-racking type meant to expose that which somebody entrusted with power to influence opinion or shape policy may try to hide after betraying public trust.
The problem is that neither of the roles above fits the “responsible journalism” construct of the MCP era—the type APM probably misses from back in the days of Kamuzu Banda when the media was there to “rally the people behind their beloved Ngwazi, the mighty Malawi Congress Party and Government.”
In those days, whatever Kamuzu said or did was headline news. Media house editorials were required to echo and applaud government views. In short, the media served as a propaganda tool for building the nation at a time when coups and civil strife rocked Africa.
Today, free press is critical and people-centred. Praising government isn’t an item on its agenda. It operates on the assumption that in anything good, there is always room for improvement. Without ignoring what government has done well, the press will at the same time, highlight and, where possible, discuss the gaps. What the President or his government does or say is measured against people’s expectations.
Media practitioners may be the first to protest if government tries to gag the media but, almost always, their concerns are also echoes by the civil society and other stakeholders in our democracy. This is because free press is a right of both journalists and the citizens of this Republic.
Could it be that folks in the village understand better the value of free press than the intellectuals at Chancellor College? Or was it an inadvertent error of omission for Tambulasi not to comment at all on threats to press freedom, the substantive issue discussed at the Mount Soche indaba? n
