My mother had the greatest influence on my career

Owen Kibenge is not a new name on Uganda’s media landscape. Starting out at Central Broadcasting Service (CBS) and later joining UBC, then UTV as a program presenter and later news anchor, he has seen it all. Currently, he works with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) where he writes, edits and interviews scientists among other things.

What does your job entail?
I interview scientists over the phone, zoom or Skype. I review papers they have written, speeches they have made, I listen to their podcasts, look through their social media posts and then I write 1000-1500 word articles for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Lately, I have also been involved in condensing articles written by other reporters and writing social media posts for the Facebook, Twitter handles for the AAAS.

How did you get where you are today?
Peter Ssematimba gave me my first shot and I took it. It was not what I wanted but I knew that it was a means to an end. So on 7th July 1996, while studying at university, I started working on the gospel show on CBS. I spoke four languages on the show.

Apparently, Sematimba’s mother was impressed so I got the job. My television career was more interesting. I had been recruited as a program announcer at Uganda Television (UTV). It was the lowest paid job at the station. When the station started day time broadcasting, I was told to work in the newsroom as a daytime news anchor. Several months into the job, I felt that I had acquired enough muscle to take on the prime time news anchors but I was denied an opportunity.

One day, I decided to take a different approach. I spoke to one of the newsroom drivers and told him to delay picking one of the anchors. He agreed and that day, I knew my long awaited opportunity had come. From 1p.m, I started reading the news and by 7p.m when the editor started fretting about his ‘star’ news anchor, I knew that he had no option but to ask me to step in. I had so much fun reading that bulletin that I was immediately put on the prime time news job, where I joined Bbale Francis.

What was your core inspiration to become a journalist?
As a child, there was always a newspaper around the house. When there were no papers, it was the BBC. I read extensively and constantly fidgeted with my dad’s shortwave radio, the dominant medium at the time. In the process, I picked up news channels in English, both in Africa and overseas. In the 1980’s before the advent of FM, radio was a joy and that is when I was bitten by the bug to become a journalist.  

What does it mean to be a journalist in a competitive market such as the US?
Geography does not change the essence of journalism. Whether you are on the streets of Manhattan or Iganga, our primary motivation as journalists is to punch the competition in the mouth with a good story.  When I worked at Reuters in New York, trading hours for the U.S. stock market acted as beacons. An hour to the opening and closing of the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market was something to behold. Whether you had video, audio or text, it had to be at the editor’s desk before markets closed.

How can a journalist today remain relevant in the dynamic media industry?
User-generated content or material from our listeners and viewers that is recorded on mobile phones and posted on social media is the biggest threat to journalism. It is hard for journalists to justify big budgets in equipment, news gathering and training. As journalists, we are still lucky that users (readers, listeners, viewers) are not storytellers.

They do not, for instance, have the privilege of their work being looked at by an editor or critiqued by colleagues, but when it comes to breaking news and eye witness accounts, we cannot compete. We are now required to bring perspective and coherence to this information ecosystem that is packed with conspiracy theorists, intelligence operatives, bloggers, vloggers, influencers, politicians, terrorists and all manner of people. To remain relevant in this new ‘information economy’, we must go back to shoe-leather journalism and master technical skills like writing, video and audio recording, photography, graphic and editing software.   

Who has been your greatest mentor?
I had many people who chipped in with ideas, criticisms, some that pushed me into situations that helped me improve. My mother for instance had the greatest influence on my journalism career. She was an English teacher and was constantly on the lookout for spelling mistakes or mispronounced words.

Do you work hard or work smart?
We cannot work smart in journalism. Anyone who thinks they are working smart is doing something else and not journalism. I equate working smart with solving a problem by finding the quickest solution to a problem and unfortunately that is not journalism. A deep, rich-in-detail investigation for any medium- text, video, photography or audio will require one to leave their comfort zone and speak to as many people as possible, read documents, listen to audio files and watch video. In my almost 20 years as a journalist, I have been trying to figure out the quickest way to do this and I have not been successful.  

How do you work hard without neglecting your social life and parenting duties?
I am a dad first, a husband second and then a journalist. My family comes first and there are no two ways about it. I am past the stage where I am forced to choose between a story and my children’s homework or soccer practice. I have also learnt that unlike other professions, journalism never takes care of its own. While bankers, lawyers, doctors, are retiring with hefty packages, a journalist like myself will get a farewell party.  

What do you do to let off steam?
Prayer is one of those things that I normally fall back to let off steam. When I have met all my deadlines, I like to curate my industrial sized music library of Ugandan music that goes back to the fifties right up to 2020. I have been working over the years with a local DJ to build this catalogue. I also read out of print books mainly about Africa written by journalists, colonialists, explorers, racists, politicians and academicians from the 1800’s to date. There are used bookstores in the Washington DC metro area that I have frequented for the last 10 years. I have amassed a collection that might take me a lifetime to complete.  Before Covid-19, I had started lifting weights. When my wife started calling me a bouncer, I quit and now I take 2-3 hour walks in the woods.

What is the last book you read?
Bantu Bureaucracy A Century of Political Evolution Among the Basoga of Uganda by Lloyd A. Fallers.