Faulty media ethics undermines journalism profession

MEDIA industry in East Africa is now at a Crossroad. This is because of the ill practiced media ethics coupled with lack of professionalism. The situation expounds amid an exponential increase in media outlets within East Africa region, hence caused faulty of media legislation. The habit has become a great shame to media practitioners within the region.
Media stakeholders in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi have warned that a myriad of archaic colonial legislation and an explosion of media outlets following partial liberalization of the sector has really endangered professional news media. The proliferation of FM radio stations in these countries following the liberalization of the air waves in the mid to late 1990s by intransigent governments, following intense pressure from the international donor community, has made it nearly impossible to enforce professional ethics among the practitioners.
Media professionals from these countries told a recent regional conference on media law and ethics in Nairobi that in some countries the phenomenon of mushrooming media outlets had completely overwhelmed the available number of trained journalists, while crippling archaic legislation hindered media operations.
The result has been hundreds of newsrooms, especially in Tanzania being flooded by either half-baked or completely un-trained journalists to supply editorial content. The situation is no better in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi or even Kenya, which boasts of a more developed media industry in terms of outlets, quality, editorial personnel and legislation.

Careful observers have noted that, the situation is growing at an alarming rate and is primarily due to extremely poor payments to journalists, photojournalists as well as editors working in these regions, the conference was told. The situation is making it virtually impossible for the media houses in the region to enforce professional ethics developed by the media councils of the respective countries with assistance from international media organisations.
Dissimilar to other East African Community (EAC) member countries, Uganda has two media councils: statutory and self-regulatory. Meanwhile, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi have statutory media councils whereas Tanzania has a self-regulatory one. “A veritable army of barefoot reporters equipped with pens and notebooks with little journalistic skills exists in Tanzania. The demand for media workers has sharply increased since the mid-1990s forcing media owners to employ people with questionable credentials,” says Dr. Bernadin Mfumbusa of Tanzania St. Augustine University.

According to him, at the time of independence in 1961 Tanzania had only two trained indigenous journalists, by the early 1990s about 600 were employed by the government but this has since soared to more than 5000 mostly untrained journalists by the end of last year (2007). The situation is so bad that Ms. Pili Mtambalike, the Director of the Media Council of Tanzania and professional journalist of more than 20 years says. “These days I am completely ashamed of identifying myself as a journalist or a media professional. I cannot even introduce myself in public forums as a media practitioner because of the way things have deteriorated.”

The reasons why she cannot dare to do that are because journalists have earned un-savoury reputations such as machinga, meaning people without education, kanjanja, meaning people without a professional training and mwandishi, Swahili for journalist/writer labeled as a liar.
The Tanzanian case study, though the most severe, seems to be representative of the EAC member countries’ media industries situation. Media practitioners from the growing number of FM radio stations in Uganda and Kenya are in a different kind of troublesome situation, though they have trained media personnel, poor remuneration has emerged as a compromising factor in enforcing professional ethics. The worst scenario is the hoarding of the FM radio frequency licenses by politicians to serve their political interests. The stations are reputed to employ un-trained personnel, not only as presenters but also as reporters. They do not have any knowledge of media laws and ethics, or heard of the codes of ethics developed by the media councils of these countries. What matters is a good voice on the mike.
Ironically presenters at the conference from all the East African countries concurred that despite being un-trained, presenters on the FM stations in the region were the most highly paid compared to the journalists or photojournalists - the worst scenario being that of non-staff writers attached to media houses - known as correspondents. The explosion of media houses, particularly in FM radio broadcasting in the region and the resulting army of untrained journalists has also given rise to the mushrooming of roof top commercial journalism training institutions as businessmen rush to cash in on the situation.

The Media Council of Kenya (MCK) says that even before the proliferation of these institutions, a lot of gaps existed in the teaching of media law and ethics in journalism training institutions. “It is certainly time that we examine the preparation ground of journalists. There has been a mushrooming of (commercial) colleges purporting to teach journalism. Some of them award degrees after only six months of study. Others teach practical courses without facilities. They churn out journalists who can’t even write,” says the MCK chairman, Waruru Wachira.

Mr. Wachira continues, “We have heard of editors who encounter interns and graduates who apparently have diplomas in photography but have never touched a camera in their lives.” He says that these institutions have contributed enormously to the deterioration of quality journalism since most of them are merely business enterprises without interest in quality. At the same time they do not have facilities, or qualified teaching staff.
According to a United Nations Educational, Science and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) report, by the end of last year the institutions offering journalism and mass communication programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa in the last two decades had increased by 422 percent.
The report indicates that they had risen from 36 in 1988 to 188 in 2007. A recent study within the East African region identified 40 schools of journalism, the majority being in Kenya and Tanzania. However, only two met the general criteria of being centres of excellence: Mass Communication Department at University of Makere in Uganda and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication University of Nairobi in Kenya. The schools differ vastly in terms of quality education. Only two universities met the criteria as centres of excellence based on curriculum/institutional capacity, professional and public service, external links and recognition, development plan, strategy and potential.
In this unfolding situation, a morass of archaic media legislation and intransigent governments who are bent on controlling the media, mostly to cover their inadequacies, is not making the situation any better.

None of the five EAC member countries is free from crippling legislation. These situations combined have forced the media stakeholders in the countries to go back on the drawing board to find ways and means through which they can uphold the core values of the media and the journalistic profession. At stake now because of increasing threats from within and outside the industry itself are media freedom, independence, objectivity, fairness, balance and truth and professionalism in practice. Despite some of the countries like Kenya having a Media Act, which was enacted last year, there still exists a myriad of legislation, some dating back to colonial regimes, muzzling or impacting negatively the criteria of a free and independent media in these countries.

A senior editor of one of Kenya’s leading media organization, Mutegi Njau says: “From the outset it must be said that Kenya’s constitution has no provision for freedom of the press. Even the constitutional provision for freedom of expression and movement has many provisions that restrict and impose many conditions on the freedoms.” Some of the restrictive legislations identified include the penal code treason and allied offences, sedition, alarming publications, subversive activities, incitement to violence, offences related to judicial proceedings, libel and other defamation laws, regulatory laws and official secrets acts. Others include licensing and censorship, parliamentary standing orders, advertising embargoes, government and owner interferences. Other countries have as many as 27 or more different clauses hidden in national judicial acts that impact negatively free and independent media operations. The most recent came from the Anti-Terrorism acts, which countries like Uganda have enacted. Kenya did not enact the law, however neither was the Freedom of Information Bill, which was being spearheaded by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).

“Uganda has a multiplicity of laws governing the media. Until recently, it was extremely difficult for media practitioners in Uganda to keep track of the numerous laws relating to the press, some dating from the colonial days,” says John Kakande, the news editor of Uganda’s leading daily newspaper, The New Vision. However two years ago, The East African Media Institute compiled a book, The Legal Framework for the Media in Uganda, which covered all legislation relating to the media. “The most controversial legal provisions relating to the media laws are in the penal code, the 1995 Press and Journalists Statute, the 1996 Electronic Media Statute and the 2002 Anti-Terrorism Act,” says Mr. Kakande. According to him, over the last two years Uganda’s government has used some of these acts to shut down media houses and to stop the broadcasting of some programmes that rubbed the authorities the wrong way among other repressive actions.

Rwanda, which has been in the international media focus since the 1994 genocide, is steadily developing its media industry, albeit still faced with a number of obstacles. Margaret Jjuuko of The School of Journalism and Communication, National University of Rwanda says that before the conflict the media was segmented into two: the government owned media and privately-owned newspapers. “Even so they were all heavily partisan either for or against the government—either for or against Tutsi or Hutu. Today while the media sector remains key to the post-genocide reconstruction of the country, it is still lacking in terms of the cardinal duty of serving the public interest,” says Jjuuko. According to her, this particularly accelerated by the fact that the sector still lacks professional knowledgeable and skilled media practitioners. The challenge for journalism, particularly in the Great Lakes region, is for the media as well as individual journalists to act more professional, ethical and responsible. What is clear is that despite the huge challenges including those of rapid technological changes, doing away with the archaic repressive legislation from these countries statute books is not going to be an easy task for a long time to come.