Media in Tanzania and Its hypocrisy

By Erick Kabendera

The media in the country has been known to beat around the bush in lots of cases. There have even been cases when they neglected what could be deemed as of national interest and pursued semi irrelevant issues.

Such as the case a month and half ago, an opinion cartoon published in the Sunday Nation newspaper by a Tanzanian professional cartoonist, Godfrey Mwampembwa a.k.a Gado fuelled a heated debate among media practitioners.

Some journalists, mostly senior writers came out strongly to criticise the cartoon, which portrayed the Tanzanian media as licking the boots of president Kikwete.

The equally opinionated commentators used the opportunity to rail on the entire media industry in Kenya accusing their counterparts of allegedly showing dislike and lack of respect for Tanzania.

Before the dust settled, they picked yet another borne with The East African commentator Charles Onyango-Obbo, whose comments on perceived Tanzanian hostility against Kenya and Uganda in the build up to the East African Federation was also not received well.

Soon, the hooting debate became overly emotional with seasoned journalists and Television talk show hosts even attempting to sell the wholesale condemnation of the Kenyan media as a priority domestic agenda.

Onyango-Obbo thought the Tanzania media has not been very “neighbourly.”

As I listened and watched the raging debate unfold in the public, I got rather confused with arguments put forward. I could not well place our mentors in the profession, some of whom obviously went overboard.

With no time the scribes digressed and bitterly launched on the proposed East African Federation, suggesting it would not workout if Kenyans were becoming the aggressors as they have always been described.

It was without surprise that some pedestrians not keen to the ongoing debate wondered aloud “Have the Kenyans passed legislation against Tanzania press?”

I symphised with the pedestrians but realised that there are so many Tanzania whom we are loosing our credibility and trust to for just trying to fight against the opinions of only two people. This is a typical excessive use of power vested on us by people.

I am saying so because it has always been urged by some media scholars that once any media outlet is registered to work in particular community, it directly belongs to the people it targets hence have to work in favour of them.

Regarding on how the media publized the cartoon, it is clear that the media personnel behind the move could be regarded as the ‘criminals of the profession ethics’ for misusing the media power.

At this time of the year, the country has so many pressing issues that the media has to give priority than a mare cartoon and the column of which the writers used to express their opinions.

I don’t know how often the rights of ordinary people in this country are violated because they don’t have accesses to that rare airtime and space in the media journalists misuse for expressing personal grievances.

There is no shame than fighting against the wrong person because you are definitely likely to lose the war.

And quite surprising, these seniors of ours shamelessly ended up attacking the messenger people and not the message. I wonder if all of the people the newspapers had depicted as cartoons were to storm into our newsrooms to manhunt us, we would have aggressively accused them of violating the freedom of expression. So, why don’t we let others also say what they think of us?

Some of agitators went as far as predicting that the federation would not workout because of the views portrayed in the cartoon and the column. The views were given at this time around when people of the three countries are giving their eagerly waited opinions on the federation.

However, Tanzania, as an independent country could decide not to be part of the federation but I don’t think the rest of the countries could not go ahead to form the federation without Tanzania.

By doing so, we have actually proved to the world that ours is the nation with the people who never believe themselves as we have always been accused of.

If journalists had to tell the truth, as their profession ethics require them to, I wonder how many of them would stand up confidently and say they have never bootlicked politicians or government leaders in the country.

Quoting from the book, ‘Fourth Estate in Tanzania’ by one of the senior members of the Fourth Estate, Lawrence Kilimwiko, I find that there is nothing that could make news over the cartoon.

Kilimwiko through the survey he did before writing his book, found out that most of the reporters and editors are paid by politicians and top government officials to write or not to write.

Says he: “…….there is a growing evidence to suggest that there is corruption in media as submitted by Warioba partly because of a holy alliance between business interest owning the media politics.”

During the just ended elections, it was obviously seen how reporters and editors turned out to be mouthpieces of politicians, and dancing to the tunes of their propagandistic politics forgetting their roles.

They went ahead to publish only clean stories even about impure politicians denying citizens their rights to decide or measuring politicians by what they would do for them.

As the elections ended, we were good witnesses of the same journalists each prouding him/herself that such and such position would be his or hers in new government.

It was then after all the positions were filled when some started critising government while others continued publishing only nice stories as if leaders of the zealous government were angles.

At all this time, the media ethics prefect, Media Council of Tanzania, continued to be toothless and mute as if nothing was happening.

Whether the president knew or didn’t know that he was being bootleaked, as long as some of us bootleaked him, and Tanzanians know it, could we say the cartoon was unfair to us?