Shs70b: Is it from Museveni or government? For Kabaka or Buganda?

The surprise Banda Palace meeting on Tuesday this week between the President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni and the Kabaka of Buganda Ronald Mutebi deservedly attracted wide coverage in national media.

Daily Monitor headline in the next day’s edition screamed: “Museveni agrees to pay Kabaka Shs70 billion”.

The outcome of the meeting, as expected, has invited considerable discussion in formal and informal places.

The question of whether the amount in question is Shs70b or Shs100b aside, Omar Kalinge-Nnyago’s reaction to the Daily Monitor story went thus; “In another ‘culture’ this headline would read: ‘Central Govt to pay Shs100bn arrears to Buganda Kingdom”.

He goes on to ask why Daily Monitor chose to phrase the headline the way it did and for whose benefit.

Yusuf Sserunkuma wrote wondering whether the agreed monies were anything to do with the kingdom’s properties or the Kabaka as an individual.

He invited the public editor to explain what exactly the Daily Monitor story wanted to mean given the variance between the headline and the intro of the story.

Ahmed Kabuye described the headline as “fake reporting” while Mulindwa Walid Lubega opined that “Daily Monitor okays Museveni in his expedition of personalisation of the State”.

I have picked out these reactions out of many others because they touch on a basic element of news, namely “prominence” in headline writing and story angling.

This is the principle editors who wrote/passed that headline were battling with.

Broadly, prominence in journalism states that “Important people are more newsworthy than others” and that “names make news”.

So looking at the names involved in this story, the editor may have believed that anchoring the headline on the names would play on the element of prominence and proximity (another element of news) to draw the reader to the story.

Human beings are generally more drawn to personalities than to abstracts, which in this case is the government and kingdom.

However, the downside was that the headline ran into muddy waters of accuracy and context giving rise to the questions that Kalinge-Nnyago and others are raising.

Three weeks ago, I addressed a similar complaint from Moses Odokonyero with regard to a story about “Gen Salim Saleh’s Shs600b plan for Rwenzori”. I referred to the NMG Editorial Policy which states that “The Group will practise issue-based as opposed to excessive or continuous personality-based journalism that tends to create an impression that the issues are driven by personal agenda…”
I also guided that as a general rule, good journalism requires that individuals are separated from their offices except where the story is personal.

I gave the example of a story about roads in Kampala and that the headline should be “KCCA builds 100km city roads” not “Musisi builds 100km city roads” and when the executive director is launching the construction, then it should be “Musisi flags off 100km city roads project”.

So to Sserunkuma and Kalinge Nnyago, I would, therefore, say the argument as whether it is President Museveni or the government of Uganda on the one hand and Kabaka Mutebi or Buganda Kingdom on the other, is resolved.

The headline should have read “Govt agrees to pay Buganda Shs70b” and then the story would go into the details of who agreed on behalf of the government and Buganda Kingdom and the basis of the transaction.

Indeed the body of the story was very clear indicating why the government was going to pay the money and for which properties that belonged to Buganda and have been under its use.

But as indicated at the beginning of the article, the editors were trying to balance between attraction of the personalities and the facts as they ought to be.

It is a judgment editors make every day. In some instances, it comes off well and in others it falls flat and confuses readers or creates distortions as it seems to be in this case.

The lesson for editors lies in the editorial policy guidelines; that is not to promote “…excessive or continuous personality-based journalism…” because then public issues get continuously represented as personal issues, which is wrong.

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