Threats to traditional media will land NRM in an ambush
About three extremes develop when dealing with regimes that hold onto power for very long period. The first is the tendency to fold the hands and give up on everything in great despair and cynicism. The thinking here is that you are dealing with an insurmountable colossus that has the capacity to annihilate every opponent in every way possible.
The second is the exact opposite. Here frustration and anger motivate the rise of militancy and defiance directed towards the regime. In Uganda, you have Forum for Democratic Change and People Power plus many other people vehemently opposed to NRM and President Yoweri Museveni. They will always make it a point to clearly state it to the powers that be that they are naked despite all pretensions.
In the middle of all this is the rise of those who seek opportunity against all odds. Here they truly know the side on which the bread is buttered. They know that the ones who have demonstrated the might in holding onto power, using the monopoly of the instruments of coercion, access to the Treasury, numbers in Parliament, stranglehold on the Judiciary and civil service, etc, have an upper hand in the political contest for the foreseeable future.
So they smartly position themselves to show their support and do whatever is possible to show the governors that they are available to ensure that they help perpetuate their hold onto power. Whether the man in power gives instructions to them directly or not is another matter altogether.
Their modus operandi is to second-guess the strongman and do what they think - preposterous or otherwise - will please him as a contribution to his hold onto power. Now most people in the media are looking over their shoulders just to be sure they are not caught on the wrong side of the ‘minimum broadcasting standards.’
Here is the genesis. For running a live broadcast on a fracas between some members of the Opposition and the police acting high-handedly, which cast the government in bad light, some media houses were ordered to sack journalists. Those behind the clampdown on the media have calculated that if they put journalists on notice, they will be less or watered down reporting on what appears like excesses by the government and its security agencies towards those opposed to NRM.
If this was 30 years ago, there would be chances of success. Today, with the development of the Internet and communication technology, media clampdowns can never translate into total blackouts. Even before a media house makes live broadcasts, there are people at the scene capturing footage using their smart phones and sharing it on whatsApp, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and all.
A radio or television station may have to take some hours to arrive at the scene, get a sense of what is happening and then decide how to run the story. A newspaper will have to get the story and run it the next day. By this time, the ‘story’ has already gone viral in its raw form, of course, being sprinkled with a pinch of everything from lies, insults and epithets.
The trouble with what goes onto social media is that it is almost not regulated. In fact, depending on what one wants to achieve, it is often abused. The amount of embellishment, misrepresentation and outright lies on social media makes traditional media a safer place to source and disseminate news. On social media, one is almost not accountable to anybody. You simply post even a deliberate lie and walk without a bother.
What is worth noting, according to the National Information Technology Survey 2017/18 conducted by the National Information Technology Authority Uganda (NITA-U), nearly 24.8 million people or 70.9 per cent of Ugandans own a mobile phone. Now even if only a half of these gadgets can access social media, especially Facebook and WhatsApp, it far outstrips the combined total of newspapers sold on a daily basis which on the average equals a combined total of about 130,000 copies.
According to the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), in 2015, about 44.9 per cent of people in urban areas watched television while about 9 per cent did so in rural areas. Households with a radio in Uganda was reported at 62.8 per cent (about 27.6 million people) in 2008, according to the World Bank. Which means that even if you cowed traditional media into censorship, still a huge number of consumers of news will access news. The only difference is that it will be sourced from an unregulated environment which is social media.
That is why the friends of NRM should instead encourage the traditional media to grow and prosper because here (with all the warts and blemishes) you still have editorial structures through which you can have more balance, truth and accuracy. Media houses, besides owners and shareholders, are still accountable to a wider public knowing that advertisers and readers would be cautious to be associated with one who is not very professional. The story of the demise of Uganda Confidential is a case study.
It is safe to say a threat to the traditional media can only have a deleterious outcome. That is popularising and making acceptable the habit of consuming unregulated and often false news on social media – much of it directed at the NRM government. It will definitely defeat the purpose of those who think that acting high handily by taking shelter under minimum broadcasting standards will protect NRM.
Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political
and social issues. [email protected]
Twitter:@nsengoba
