What dog is Uganda journalism? A reader answers public editor
Thank you Mr Odoobo C. Bichachi, the Public Editor. Reading your April 17 article titled, “If Uganda media isn’t a watchdog, what dog is it?”, and concluding the article with the very same question, I thought about what other kind of dog Ugandan media might be or turn out to be.
However, you addressed the media as a collective and never tried to look at it on individual basis or per media house basis. If you were to involve this trajectory, you would soon discover that Ugandan media falls in all categories like the many dog types that you could find out there in the canine world, the very same way you also conjectured Ugandan media as perhaps lap dog or guard dog.
To begin with, many Ugandan journalists as individuals operate like stray dogs. Some stray dogs aren’t owned at all by any individual or community while some have an owner who doesn’t cage them or keep them on a leash.
This usually is intended to let such a dog have the freedom to fend for itself. So it can roam freely in the community scavenging for whatever left over that could be out there and might at times even sneak up to and hunt down a free ranging hen or rabbit.
Such a dog usually returns to the homestead it calls home in the evening and if its lucky to find the family having eaten chicken or beef, it will be sure to have some bones reserved for it or some offals left where the slaughter took place but it never is entitled to a meal like one kept in a kernel.
Then there is the stray dog that has no one it calls owner and has no domestic home it has as its port of call after the day’s roaming. Such a dog usually has as home some place in the bush or shrub or some abandoned or inhabited building. Fact is such a dog can be termed as wild and tends to avoid coming into contact with humans. It is these that are most likely to be rabid.
Now, in journalism it will need to survive and that is how you find yourself with online news sites whose content mostly borders on blackmail. They produce blackmail content and the victims reach out and put something on table for the tune of the song to change or for the music to be switched off.
Like stray dogs, journalists who at times tag themselves as freelance have to adopt stern or tactical survival strategies. Stray dogs are indeed usually far smarter and shrewder than the domesticated dogs.
Some city stray dogs have been known for instance to cross busy roads at zebra crossings. This they do after getting to realise through observation that crossing at such a point leaves it with far less chances of being run over by vehicles. So, you will find that most of the blackmail journalists rarely go for the state establishment since they even know the State isn’t easily intimidated or fears to lose credibility. They thus usually go for individuals and more so those problematic to the State.
As regards media houses, they come in all shades but most Ugandan media houses are cowardly dogs that rarely bark but simply whine when danger is in the area. They let the threat know about the dog’s existence but indirectly telling the threat that am not in the mood for a confrontation, so go on with whatever you are up to fast and move out.
That you found problem with a journalist not exploring the various angles that could offer clarity to the stories you mentioned is because most Ugandan field journalists have become accustomed to just parroting whatever is told to them.
Another story somewhere else caught my attention; the story about a UPDF MP claiming in Parliament that the soldiers they represent have been stoned by civilians and that one was injured and another was dead.
This UPDF MP named the soldier who was injured but didn’t provide the name of the dead soldier. Surely, this should have raised questions or eyebrows but neither the Speaker, nor the Parliamentary reporters raised this issues.
So our journalists are more like stenographers whose purpose is only to record. These are one-purpose dogs, who for instance, could just be meant to only always walk by the side of an old man around the village. They won’t retrieve, sniff or warn off. And like they say, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. No amount of training is going to have it adopt new tricks.
But the journalists could also just be giving what is equal to what they are paid. They might deem it just fair that they give as little as they are paid since Ugandan media houses for the most just pretend to be paying and the journalists could also just be pretending to work.
Remember, ours is a village where it is problematic and a danger to you if you are a barking dog. Many barking dogs have been muzzled or hunted down like vermin.
Note: The public editor’s column shall return next week.
