‘Uglish’, climate change and Mukula’s very, very big ship

This week, I give my entire column space to you the readers. Have your say!
David Mulabi: Thanks for your article on the climate change agenda and coverage in Uganda (see: “Beyond climate blah, blah, what is Uganda’s climate change story?” November 12).  I had been thinking of raising a “tantrum” on the same!  Over the past months, BBC and other global media houses have been covering climate change so much. 

And in the two weeks of COP26, it was day-on-day, hour-on-hour coverage. But in Uganda and Africa, the most climate change affected places, one had to look too hard to find anything; not even a single front page story. Really? And then you pull on us the usual lame media “blah blah blah” excuse: “Climate stuff is pretty boring for many people; it will not enthrall audiences on TV or sell newspaper so this may explain why the coverage has been low-key.”
Huh, boring! Do you have any idea how poor people in villages have been irreparably impacted? Someone has to help the nation to bring these out and relate them to the global discourse to create public interest. This is a terrible dereliction of duty by the media. Media is supposed to shape the public agenda on such important existential issues of society, not the other way round. There are very many local angles with touching human stories on climate change that you could have published or even serialised over a month on agriculture, health, environment, urbanisation, nutrition, land use/conflict, shifts in livelihoods, etc. I don’t know whether it is laziness or incompetence.   

Please tell your colleagues that they should be embarrassed. I am very furious!  And this is not because I submitted an op-ed on the subject that went to the editor’s waste paper bin. I would have said the same... because I am impacted as a rice farmer.
Public Editor: You indignation about our handling of the climate change story is understandable. As you rightly point out, we must do more to bring this conversation home, rather than reporting about it occasionally as a distant issue we don’t live with every day. 
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Isaac Acong: Please notify your editors that they haven’t identified six casualties by name and face. A one Sande who died instantly at Raja Chambers is not a policeman; he worked for Kaburu Okello, an engineering consulting firm. Their office is at Raja Chamber Annex, behind the tall building.
Public Editor: Yes there has been little, if any, profiling in the media of those that lost their lives in the two Kampala bomb blasts on November 16. It is important that this is done for the record and for closure, especially for the families that lost their loved. The cue should be taken. 

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Leslie Muhindo: I was reading an article titled, “38-year-old woman dies after outing with boyfriend”, in the online Daily Monitor of November 19, 2021, when I came across the sentence, “The body of the deceased, a born of Nawanyago Sub-county...”
I thought that was incorrect. In fact it reminded me of the common question by university students, “What course are you offering?”, when asking friends what courses they are pursuing. I thought I should bring this to your attention. 
Public Editor: You are right; that phrase is typical “Uglish” and has no place in Daily Monitor that publishes in English, and uses British English as the standard. I shared with the editors so it is corrected.
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Isaac Acong: Refer to your caption: “The giant marine vessel, MT Kabaka Mutebi II, which Mike Mukula said measures 188 metres by 23 metres, and weighs more than four tonnes, was reportedly pushed into the waters of Lake Victoria for the first time on October 4.”(Sunday Monitor, November 21). A188m x 23m vessel cannot be described alongside a four tonne object! This vessel is two football pitches combined (goal post to goal post x 2) and four tonnes is the weight of four cubic metres; that amount of water poured in a container the size of your office will fill up to my knees! If you weigh 90kgs, 45 of you have total weight of four tonnes and will fit in a bus! 

Your journalists need to educate themselves about sizes, lengths and weights! Or they could have just said it is very, very big!
Public Editor: Clearly, the caption writer did not have a good grasp of numbers, weights and measures. Feedback well taken and shared.
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