In the world of newspapers, heads you lose, tails you lose

In the business world, I have sat on many boards and headed quite a few. Of those I headed, none was more taxing and exhausting as heading “The Nation Media Group” of East Africa; which includes Daily Monitor newspaper and NTV. “Your paper is anti-government and we will show you who has power in this country,” that is how I was greeted by a government minister. “We are going to close your newspaper.” End of conversation.
With those words ringing in our ears, my CEO at The Monitor then and I left the minister’s office to go and salvage what the police would not take away.

This was after the government had shut down The Monitor newspaper in 2002 over a story it didn’t like.
Shutting down the paper is one thing, going through the drawers of the journalists one by one is another. One officer stumbled on a gem.

This was a photograph of a lady dancing in a night club enjoying herself with one leg up and no underwear. In time, she was appointed a minister.
When after some time government relented and allowed us to print the newspaper, most of what the police had carried away was returned.

But the photograph of the dancing minister never came back. To this day, I wonder whether the picture was destroyed, put in the strong room or is framed and hanging in the toilet of the officer’s mess!
During my tenure of being chairman of Monitor Publications Ltd and NTV, we were shut down three times for “being anti- government”.

The reason for closing NTV was the most unconvincing. It was alleged that our equipment was too heavy for the mast on top of Kololo hill.
Since we re-opened, other equipment have been added to the mast and it has not yet keeled over. We knew then, that a competitor station had a hand in the closure of our station. Every journalist working for The Monitor has on his desk a list of “dos” and “don’ts” and these include: Be factual; do not speculate; be objective; and check your facts, etc. I never attended any session at which Monitor journalists were told to write only anti–government news.
His Highness the Aga Khan, who owns the newspaper, would never allow the paper to be anti–government. The so-called anti– government accusation is often when the paper writes about a particular minister in government negatively, the minister then finds solace by hiding behind government for something he did for his own benefit and not that of government or the country at large. If The Monitor were to publish some of the stories that a particular newspaper publishes on a daily basis, it would have been shut down permanently a long time ago.
One day I got a telephone call from government demanding to know why NTV was showing a gruesome picture of a person shot by the police in a riot.

I was told to fire the journalists who had taken that photograph and the person airing the pictures.
I strode into the studio every bit the Big Chairman. Soon all the employees in the studio at the time were seated in front of me.

I told them why I was there and what I was going to do.
One courageous member of staff stood up and addressed me directly. He said: “Sir, before you sack us, we would like to show you what we have not shown to the public.” When they rolled the reel and I saw the woman holding her intestines, I almost threw up. I stopped the reel and waved off the staff. Then I remained with the director of programmes, who by the look on his face, felt sorry for me.
One day I was sitting with the CEO in his office when his personal assistant brought an envelope. Inside the envelope was a complete bank statement of a government minister – fat bank account. This came unsolicited. It was sent by a bank employee who wanted the paper to know how illegally rich some of the ministers are. As soon as we saw the statement, the CEO shredded it because, he said, you never know whether this is a trick to catch you with somebody else’s bank statement.
The public has no idea what journalists get to know.

What we see in the papers is only 10 per cent of what has been kept out of the papers.

A very senior person in government called me to tell me that the President was very upset with one of the journalists and the President wants me to fire him immediately. Coming from that person, I knew it was serious.
So I went to The Monitor offices and called the top three people in the company and told them what I was going to do.

One of the three asked if we could meet outside of the office – so we went to a parking yard. Then the person who suggested that we meet outside of the office spoke. He said: “Before you sack him, we want you to know that he is very close to the First Family, therefore go slow.”
I did better than that, I asked the PPS for an appointment to see the President.

When I told the President what he was supposed to have said, he looked surprised. In any case, he told me to deal with the other cases and he would deal with that journalist. The President told me that if he wants me to do something for him, he will tell me directly, not through a third party. Likewise, when a minister told me the President was very angry with the same journalist and I must fire him, I was ready with an answer. Ugandans who fall out with the NRM government run to The Monitor to tell their story. I was, therefore, more than amused when our tormentor fell foul with the government and asked The Monitor to promote his candidature.
On those two occasions the paper was shut down, the order “never came from above”.

It was always someone who thought the President would get upset upon reading the article. When the paper quotes a politician on something negative, the said politician says he was quoted out of context. If the paper does not print what the politician said, it is because “You Monitor hate the government.”
So heads you lose, tails you lose. I retired from the Group victorious – a rare occurrence in the world of newspapers in Africa.

The writer is a former board chairman
of Monitor Publications Limited