Media should learn to be own watchdog

Recent abduction and violent arrests of journalists by State security operatives should disturb all media practitioners. First, veteran journalist Rev Isaac Bakka was abducted and only dumped at Luzira prison by his abductors, after months. Then Charles Etukuri of New Vision was snatched and bundled into armed men’s car and held illegally for five days. Third was Top Radio journalist Richard Kisule, who was violently arrested and remains in detention.

These trampling on the rights of journalists urgently demands that media managers, editors, and writers take a hard inward look to see where we took the first missteps for others to mistreat us as chicken thieves. The media fraternity as a victim has, at best, only managed to quack in disharmony as our own are snatched up or tortured. But these abuses can only be robustly fought when we stick to our professional ethics and a code of conduct.

Regrettably, some of our own have confessed to being caught up between doing journalism and working as fifth columnists to spy on colleagues as well as news sources. This is damning to the profession as we betray colleagues and worse, the confidence of news sources.

The big risk here is that once mistrusted, we lose the confidence of the public we serve with truth every day. This is why media houses should be hard on professionalism, lest our own numbers provide the State the noose to gladly hang us. And this conversation should never be about individuals, but us as a body.

In March 2016, we warned in a harsh editorial, ‘Journalists should first remove logs in own eyes’. Our position followed the savage punching of a Bukedde TV journalist by a minister and failure by journalists to step forward and condemn the minister’s wicked act. We had warned that such silence had exposed media practitioners as disorganised.

Yet journalists have been known to be most vocal on poor governance and bringing errant individuals and institutions to order. Sadly, journalists have not opened themselves up to self-examination and public scrutiny. Even when it was clear the minister’s brutal conduct undermined the freedom of the trade, the media associations remained tight-lipped as if nothing horrendous had happened to their own. Worse is the confession among us of working as undercover State agents paid spies to report on colleagues. This betrays our profession, colleagues and worse, news sources, which we should zealously protect.
These failures by media houses on protection and discipline, point to our abdication of duty.

It should be now that our big media houses put their feet down, take a hard inward look, drop the hypocrisy, reform and overhaul our shadowy journalists associations.

The issue: Scribes arrests
Our view: It should be now that our big media houses put their feet down, take a hard inward look, drop the hypocrisy, reform and overhaul our shadowy journalists associations.