Bobi Wine coverage: UCC to review content of 13 media houses

The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) is undertaking intensive investigations into the operations of the 13 media houses who were recently directed to suspend staff members for allegedly breaching the minimum broadcasting guidelines. 

The stations were instructed to suspend 39 senior staff including news producers and managers, who allegedly violated the guidelines while covering recent protests by Kyaddondo East MP, Mr Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine.

The stations include Akaboozi FM, Beat FM, Capital FM, CBS FM, Pearl FM, Radio Sapientia and Radio Simba.  The directive also affected Bukedde TV, BBS TV, Salt TV, NBS TV, NTV, and Kingdom TV.   

They were specifically accused of failing to install equipment capable of delaying live broadcasts for several minutes, in order to edit out content deemed inciting to members of the public or offensive to protected groups of the population.   

UCC’s executive director, Mr Godfrey Mutabazi says that the broadcasters have since requested the regulator to conduct separate investigations into the alleged breaches.

 He said that the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) argued that there is no way the accused organisations could have collectively breached the standards to warrant a collective punishment.      

This was during a meeting with executives of the NAB who were led by their  chairperson, Mr Kin Karisa. The meeting was held at UCC headquarters in Bugolobi, Kampala.

Mr Mutabazi said that  as opposed to the suspension directive that was previously issued by UCC, the staff in question are instead requested to “step aside” as investigations are conducted, to prevent them from interfering with the exercise.   

“For the avoidance of doubt, these employees of the broadcaster who have been requested to step aside shall be allowed to continue working in another capacity which is not subject of this investigation,” a UCC statement said.

 Mr Mutabazi said that the investigation will also focus on ascertaining shortfalls of each media house before they are accordingly sanctioned.

Mr Karisa said broadcasting companies are required to adhere to the minimum broadcasting standards during the investigations in order to continue normal operations including live broadcasts.    

Mr Ibrahim K. Bbosa, the head of Public Relations at UCC said investigations will include analysing content that was aired in the last week of April, among other benchmarks.

READ:

Media houses reject UCC directive to suspend staff

The activists say UCC actions continue to cause a chilling effect amongst many broadcasters who for fear of losing their licenses, bow to the pressures of unfairly terminating programmes or their employees