Journalists boycott DP press briefing over Mao’s perpetual late coming
Group of journalists deployed to cover Democratic Party weekly press briefing held at city house on Tuesday walked out protesting the endemic failure by the party leadership to keep time.
The conference was supposed to be addressed by party President Norbert Mao who came in shortly after the journalists had left the premises.
DP’s weekly press briefing is supposed to start at exactly 10:00am but by 11:30am, none of the party leaders had turned up at the venue.
The protest was led by the CBS senior report Shalif Lukenge who claimed that they (journalists) are tired of being taken for granted whenever they come to cover the weekly meeting.
“We want to be considered as important people, we have deadlines for the bulletins but whenever we come to DP offices we spent almost half a day on one assignment which is not fair,” he said.
Mr Lukenge urged DP leadership to change their tendency of not keeping time because it affects their deadline.
“As journalists covering DP weekly presser, we have agreed to move out of the press room. We agreed to move out immediately after the minutes they requested elapsed,” he said.
Ms Regina Nassanga from Mama FM said DP’s failure to keep time without any proper communication or apology is the reason they decided to protest.
“Some of us are assigned to cover several assignments but we end up doing one because of time wastage. DP should change and start keeping time if they want to cooperate with journalists,” she said
Press Secretary to the DP President Mr Fred Mwesigwa tried to calm down the situation asking journalists who were protesting to be patient for some more minutes in vain.
Mr Mwesigwa apologised for the delay and said that the President was on his way to city house, requesting ten more minutes. When the clock struck ten minutes journalists did not wait for any other announcement but instead moved out of the press room.
Talking to the media after the protest DP Administrator Peter Ssempijja said people are free to show their discontent on anything they feel it’s not done in the right way.
“As DP we have been in good terms with journalists but it’s unfortunate that such incident has happened. We promise that we are going to change and get back on our usual time,” he said
Our efforts to talk to Mr Mao to know why he delayed were futile as he was not picking his known telephone number.
