Govt to set up laws regulating Social media

The Minister of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and National Guidance, Judith Nabakooba, has said the Government is planning to have a law to regulate social media.

“On social media, the content collector is the editor and publisher. This gives room for unprofessionalism, and misinformation,” she said. Nabakooba made the remarks during the 2021 Annual Media Convention that was organised by Makerere University department of journalism and multimedia at the Kampala campus yesterday.

The event was organised in commemoration of World Press Freedom Day under the theme, Press Freedom as a Public Good.

Nabakooba said social media is not so old in the country, which explains why there are no regulations governing it.

She said to come up with regulations, the Government will do wider consultations with all stakeholders.

PROFESSION INFILTRATORS

She decried the infiltration of media by untrained people.

“To solve infiltration, we will call all media stakeholders to bring ideas on streamlining and identifying a professional journalist,” she said.

Nabakooba said the Government is ready to support all institutions in embracing digital media, which she said is the new trend.

“The ICT ministry has an innovation fund that is available to all those who write proposals that can come up with solutions to the challenges affecting the country,” she said.

“It is not every day that journalists face challenges with government, but where it happens, we are ready to engage with them. We cannot take it out that the whole working relationship between journalists and government is all bitter,” she said.

Nabakooba further called on journalists to always report to relevant authorities when assaulted for action to be taken.

INDEPENDENCE OF MEDIA

While giving a keynote address, Busingye Kabumba, a lecturer of law at Makerere University, explained that if you have a politician or businessman as a media owner, there is always a question on what kind of news the company produces.

“To get standard trusted stories, I suggest to have media owners who are professionally trained journalists,” he said.

Kabumba added that although there is social media, the legacy media still has chance of surviving in this era.

“This is already happening as we see many available media houses having online presence, which helps the public to have platforms where they can get trusted information,” he said.

Makerere University vice-chancellor Barnabas Nawangwe said the media is concentrating on politics, neglecting development issues.

“You need to criticise more of government programmes to see that they are improved. If you concentrate only on politics, everybody will think life is all about that, leaving out major issues which could develop their livelihood.”

Dr Aisha Nakiwala, the head of the journalism department at the university, said the calculus of journalism students has been evolving over time. She said as the media transforms from legend journalism to digital, the department has also changed to the new phase and is going to introduce a bachelor’s of journalism and multimedia.

CRANMER MUGERWA AWARD

As part of the celebration, the university, with support from New Vision, organises the Cranmer Mugerwa Award, which is given to the best photography student.

Mugerwa was a photographer at New Vision and died in March 2001. This year, the award, which comes with a sh1m cash prize and six months paid internship training at New Vision, was won by Christine Kabazira.

While handing over the award, Vision Group’s Geoffrey Kulubya described Mugerwa as a talented photographer who would write and at the same time take pictures.

Kabazira thanked New Vision for taking the initiative to recognise the best students in the profession.

“This is the time we need to work together as female journalists to fight against sexual harassment through reporting crimes and following up to see that offenders are brought to book,” she said.