The media and the battle of the ‘sharks’ and ‘whales’

 
By Makwaia wa Kuhenga ( a Columnis)
 
‘…I wrote to impress on you on the need for the Tanzania Media Fund (TMF) to support initiatives by practising journalists to sustain publications of their own away from powerful private interest groups. As evidence of this factor is the current raging battle between business interest groups in the print and electronic media in this country today.
 
It is also important for the donor community to the TMF to look into the aspect of supporting journalists’ initiatives to launch media outlets of their own, to achieve a middle ground and genuine editorial independence away from powerful private interest media groups. This should go a long way to achieve precisely the same ideals of the TMF, but in a genuine and meaningful manner…’
 
This Columnist to the Executive Fund Manager, Tanzania Media Fund is there ever a ‘free’ press when it comes to the interests of the owner of a given media outlet and the public’s right to know on the one hand and the editorial independence or a ‘free conscience’ of the journalists working for that owner of a media outlet on the other?
 
Is a government-owned media necessarily ‘un-free’ just because it is owned by a given government of the day, as is the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation (TBC) or the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) or even this newspaper, the Daily News? What makes it ‘un-free’ - just because it is financed via tax payers’ money through the government of the day?
 
Does the public have to rely on the privately owned media, just because it is privately owned and therefore ‘independent’? These are certainly huge questions for any media scholar. But they are of topical interest today in the Tanzanian media landscape in the context of the running story that has dominated the local media in the intervening period.
 
This is the story about what I have elected to call as the ‘battle of the sharks and the whales’ - a description I have coined arising from the war of words of two individuals, both of whom are bona fide owners of media outlets; including television stations and the media. It is a story which is just too familiar with the public now: it started with one of the media owners, a distinguished personality in his own right, coming up with ‘a list of a lootocracy’ known in the local jargon as ‘mafisadi,’ but which this gentleman decided to describe as ‘sharks’.
 
The climax of the story, it would appear, came in a response by one of the people mentioned allegedly belonging to the pool of a ‘lootocracy’, a prominent businessman with interests in the print and electronic media and equally a prominent member of the Central Committee of the ruling party here. He responded by reading a dossier which he apparently had researched and compiled himself on his accuser, describing him as ‘worse than a shark – actually a whale’!
 
For reasons of taste and decency, I do not intend to go into details on the pros and cons of the two players trading accusations against each other. My preoccupation is to address issues and not individuals. But what is relevant for this perspective today is the conduct of the media, both print and electronic presumably owned by the two giants. In the intervening period of the saga and furore of this story, a pattern has clearly emerged for readers and watchers of the newspapers and television owned by the two media moguls.
 
This pattern has made no illusion as to which side a given group of the media was slanted editorially. The principle of journalism which is objective reporting of a given utterance by a two-pronged approach – that is giving a fair coverage of both sides to the story – has been completely ignored. Cameras have focused on the palatable angles, tasty and ‘helpful’ to either side – the ‘sharks’ or ‘whales’!
 
Stories were bluntly one sided in the print media owned by either side – with unpalatable angles to a respective owner in the tussle furiously spiked! So one’s hand needed to rotate the remote control wishing to catch up what the other side has to stay with the pattern ownership no longer hidden or subtle! It was very interesting indeed and this development certainly provides a good chapter for a media thesis researcher.
 
It is a situation which has earned the following description from the Secretary of the Media Council of Tanzania (MCT): ‘What editors are doing in this war of words between two media owners is shameful. They just cannot justify what they are doing…’ He added: ‘I want to make this amply clear, it is not a secret anymore. Looking at the kind of stories we are seeing, it is evident that editors have been bought…
 
They have a price tag on their heads. But this will be their undoing. Nobody can blame media owners for what is happening, as editors are supposed to advise them accordingly as professionals.’ These remarks by Mr Kajubi Mukajanga, the Secretary of the MCT, are convenient to me in the focus of this perspective today.
 
Mr Mukajanga may simply have forgotten that in real life, very few people have ‘strong balls’ to stick up to professional principles for one thing because it is one’s job on the firing line! The adage that ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’ is precise when we come to discuss the logic of an ownership pattern! Frankly, I share Mr Mukajanga’s disgust because I am a practising media person in my own right – I cannot therefore escape from the bullets fired from either side of this tussle!
 
Effectively, media people are invariably all constrained under the circumstances in this quarrel, because the writing is on the wall in the event they stick to their principles and they may be stepping into the toes of these giants in the event they report an angle unpalatable or inimical to the interests of those owners!
 
Not only stepping into the toes, they also face the risk of being blacklisted by the two moguls, should they be judged to have ‘favoured’ one side in this battle! So here then, comes what I consider as a possible salvation for journalists. It is the possibility of empowering them to own their own media houses or newspapers albeit in a small way.
 
These small media enterprises may retain a middle and professionally principled ground between powerful private media interest groups and the public interest for truthful information on the other. A quotation at the outset of this perspective provides the chore of my thesis that the time is now for supporting journalists’ initiative to launch publications of their own, that may suit present-day Tanzania’s market place, at the same time tilting the current imbalance and apparent negativity in media ownership patterns.
 
A fund by western donor countries is already in place – the Tanzania Media Fund – that may be relied upon to support local journalists in a genuine and meaningful way to escape their current predicament when they are obliged to take sides, even though they may be aware of facts quite to the contrary. Is it a reasonable thesis? Can this proposal make sense to the powers-that-be behind the TMF?
 
Makwaia wa Kuhenga is a Senior Journalist & Author.