MEDIA FREEDOM UNDER ATTACK; IN WHOSE INTEREST?

By Mutabazi Sam Stewart

Of late, there has been heightened unease about the trend of events of continuous limitation and curtailment of fundamental freedoms of Ugandans in relation to the right to assemble (association) and freedom of speech. The media both government controlled and private, has acted together to fight for space to air their views without intimidation and harassment from government with limited successes. Many analysts are wondering why government is acting this way at this point in time. Considering the hostile press government has suffered in the past years, today’s coverage, I would say is not as bad or as worse as it can get. Government needs to be assured that bad press won’t get better by muzzling the media.

Today, we shall deal with freedom of the press and hopefully we shall discuss freedom of association next week. The two are interlinked. Freedom of the media cannot be affected without affecting freedom of association and the two freedoms together form the greatest component of democracy in the true sense of it.

If state control of the media was the solution to covering up government excesses, the Zimbabwean regime would be enjoying the best publicity every government would envy. President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe thought that he would limit the level of negative coverage by introducing unacceptable press curbs for local journalists. He later alone banned international media from reporting within his country. The result was the exact opposite of what he intended to achieve. If the NRM wants to do it the Mugabe way, let it go ahead with this clamp down on media and freedom of assembly. Soon it will realize that the war against the media can never be worn by any government either in the short or long run. No matter the strength of a government, it must never underestimate the power of the media. Suppressing the media is like drowning a balloon under the sea. It will always come back to the surface.

The future stability of any regime can never be guaranteed under any circumstances. The media can only be intimidated once in a while. It can never be fully bottled up all the time. Intermittent hiccups and disruptions in the relations between the state and media will always occur and overzealous governments will always try to overstep their imaginations and political hallucinations but this can only be temporal, not permanent because it is not sustainable. Soon or later the regime realizes that it can’t catch up with the power of the media which may lead to the collapse of the regime due to reasons clandestinely orchestrated by benevolent media campaigns that are hard to censor.

The media in every country is like a herd of dogs which forebodingly guard the master’s house. An intruder who comes face to face with the first dog prays that it may not bark or make noise to attract the attention of other dogs because. Likewise, an attack on local media will almost automatically invite the wrath of international media fraternity, the consequences of which cannot be good for the country as well as for the sitting regime.


If government can be this concerned during these times when the media has been exercising some form of self censorship, what will happen when both local and foreign media decide to work together to put their foot down to report what they perceive to be accurate news!. May be government will at that time not only imprison journalists, it may engage a higher gear of public execution, Idi Amin style.

It would seem commonsense that any government would do anything within its power to portray itself as a protector of people’s rights no matter how it is provoked by the opposition and other forces bent on discrediting it. Cool headedness would, to any accomplished politician make more sense in forestalling and dissenting view that contradicts the government line of thinking.
I cannot have better words to advise government or indeed those close to public administration in any regime than declaring that the surest way to a fast lane of unpopularity, maladministration and an almost guaranteed way to secure regime collapse is for the sitting administration to inadvertently, with no clear reason, seek to control or hinder the flow of information, be it by muzzling the media or administering unnecessary control on media freedom and public debate. The consequences of such a policy are the same irrespective of which country it is applied and by which regime.

A free press can of course be good or bad, but most certainly without freedom the press will never be anything but bad. The 35th president of USA John F Kennedy once said “There is a terrific disadvantage in not having an abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily. Even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn’t write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn’t any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press”. Kennedy was only stating the obvious. Every government recognizes the importance of the media because even a bad press is better than no press at all. What puzzles most of us is why a government like President Yoweri Museveni’s that claims to have brought unfettered freedom to Ugandans would chose to become hostile to the media at this point in time. Don’t forget to join me next week as we look at freedom of association.