By Dr. Enock Kibuuka

Today as the world celebrates the World Press Freedom Day, I congratulate all journalists and media houses in Uganda for their noble job, challenges notwithstanding.

The 1993 United Nations (UN) General Assembly proclaimed and gazetted May 3, as World Press Freedom Day. This was a response to a call by African journalists, who in 1991 produced the landmark Windhoek Declaration on media pluralism and independence.

The day celebrates three fundamental principles of press freedom namely:

1) to monitor press freedom around the world,

2) to defend the media from attacks on their independence, and

3) to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.

Peter Forsskål, a Finnish philosopher, theologian, botanist and orientalist wrote in his publication titled, Thoughts on Civil Liberty published in 1759: Freedom of the written word develops knowledge most highly, removes all harmful statutes, restrains the injustices of all others, and is the Government’s surest defence in a free State. Because it makes the people in love with such a mode of government, a wise government will rather let the people express their discontent with pens than with other guns, which enlightens on the one hand, appeases and prevents uprising and disorder on the other.

A critical analysis of Forsskål’s narrative is that the alternative to violence is freedom of the printed word, in which case it is the press freedom and freedom of journalists to do their job.

World over, apart from full-scale wars, political persecutions, jihads and terrorist acts, journalists are arguably next on the list of people with regrettable professional hazards while doing their job. Ironically, even those countries that claim custodianship of democracy and free speech, are conduits in harassing journalists and stifling free press.

In many countries, local journalists and media houses in particular, are the targets of threats ranging from intimidation and harassment to arbitrary arrests and detention, including misogynist attacks on female journalists. This is in several respects a consequence of an extensive transition process involving politics and geopolitics, the economy and information technology. There are even cases of outright murder in which journalists or their sources have been targeted. Here we may recall a few case studies:

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), it is reported that the Israeli forces killed over 5,600 Palestinians, injured about 115,000 Palestinians and killed over 45 Palestinian or Arab journalists between 2008 and 2020. Israel is a very close and strong ally of the United States of America (USA) sharing economic, military and intelligence ties even when Israel continues to massacre Palestinians.

Countries like the US and the United Kingdom never criticise or condemn Israel for its barbaric and uncouth acts against Palestinians and Palestinian journalists. No wonder, on December 8, 2018, CNN, fired one of its Contributors, Marc Lamont Hill, allegedly for making controversial comments during a meeting at the United Nations held for the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

In his remarks at that meeting, Hill said "we must advocate and promote non-violence; we cannot endorse a narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing in the face of State violence and ethnic cleansing.” He thus called for a "free Palestine from the river to the sea." Hill’s comments were immediately condemned by critics who said Hill was calling for the end of the Israeli State. Hill was accused of anti-Semitism and accordingly fired from CNN. Hill is now the host of The Upfront on Aljazeera.

Another story concerns Julian Assange, a renowned journalist and founder of WikiLeaks who since 2012 had taken refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom (UK) until April 11, 2019, when the British Metropolitan Police Service entered the Embassy and arrested him.

Several countries, Sweden, UK, the US accused Assange for leaking what they called “classified information.” In particular, the US accused Assange of publishing nearly 750,000 ‘classified’ US documents, including the Iraq War Logs which detailed the number of civilian deaths during the Iraq war.

The US government alleged computer hacking and intrusion against Assange, while Sweden, his own country, alleged rape and molestation cases against him. Ironically, just recently, the US government confessed that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction while Mr. Tony Blair years after he left office as Prime Minister, was compelled to apologise to the British people for involving British troops in Iraq. He confessed that they “acted on wrong intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction."

Another recent case was on October 2, 2018 when Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident, journalist, columnist for The Washington Post, former editor of Al-Watan and former general manager and editor-in-chief of the Al-Arab News Channel, was brutally killed and dismembered, when he was persuaded to enter the Saudi Consulate in Turkey. It was alleged that he was killed by Saudi security operatives on the orders of the Saudi King.

Another disorienting story occurred on Wednesday, May 11, 2022 when the world witnessed yet another barbaric assault of the Aljazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Aqleh, who was shot and murdered in cold blood by Israeli police. Shireen had worked with Aljazeera for over two decades covering stories in the Occupied West Bank region; Gaza. On the fateful day, Shireen was on an assignment in Jenin, Occupied West Bank, when the Israeli police shot her to death. Another Palestinian journalist, Ali al-Samoudi, with whom Shireen was covering the story, was shot in the back and was rushed to hospital by fellow Palestinians. These and many other unfortunate cases against journalists are some of the justifications for commemorating the world Press Freedom Day.

On Monday, April 17, this year, the New Vision Editorial expressed a deep concern on page 20, entitled, “Security agencies should stop harassing journalists.” This followed a sad incident where a police officer reportedly beat and pepper-sprayed two journalists while covering an intern doctors’ protest at Mulago hospital.

Article 29 (1) (a) of the Uganda Constitution stipulates that, “Every person shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression which shall include freedom of the press and other media.” It is an important right in a free society to be freely allowed to contribute to society’s well-being. However, if that is to occur, it must be possible for society’s state of affairs to become known to everyone, and it must be possible to everyone to speak his mind freely about it. Where this is lacking, liberty is not worth its name.

When we use the concept of freedom of expression it encompasses all forms of utterances, be they private or public, such as speech, petitions, demonstrations, actions that demonstrate an opinion, art, all forms of media messages, etcetera, etcetera. However, this raises the question of whether freedom of expression and freedom of the press are equivalent, or whether freedom of the press should be interpreted as one of the many freedoms falling under the concept of freedom of expression, albeit a very important one.

Is the press as an institution entitled to greater freedom from regulations and restrictions than are institutions and individuals that claim to represent the public in the same way the ‘press’ does (particularly in the form of news media)? There is no doubt that the press plays a critical role in all societies, particularly in defending and promoting democracy and citizens’ right to be informed and to debate.

However, this begs the question as to whether the press should have different privileges for accessing information from the government than individual citizens or the general public have? Here in Uganda, though not so gravely pronounced as it is elsewhere, on several occasions we have seen, not only security operatives, but also, civilians, politicians, religious leaders, and artistes condescending, and indeed battering and assaulting journalists. We must condemn this uncouth conduct by the public against journalists.

Article 40 (2) of the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda states that, “Every person in Uganda has the right to practise his or her profession and to carry on any lawful occupation, trade or business.” From the web of this particular article, one golden thread must be seen that journalists have a right to practice journalism. Nevertheless, journalists and media houses should create a balance between their right of freedom to practice journalism, the right to privacy of individuals which is also guaranteed under the Constitution, as well as the security of the country and then determine a necessary trade-off.

The issues raised by our contemporary global and multicultural societies are complex. In an age of globalisation and digitisation, market paradigms based on the principle of accumulation of private gains have come to be the driving force behind and organisational basis for social life in our communities. The world is faced with a lot of complex issues: climate change, economic crises, poverty, civil uprisings, political turmoil, armed conflict, flows of refugees, terrorism, radicalisation and extremism are issues that concern all of us.

As much as the academic community has a cardinal role to play in making us understand these issues and come up with practical solutions to overcome them through scholarly and applied research, the media are no exception. The media should help us improve our understanding of these issues as well as current developments in our increasingly wired communities instead of manipulating and misinforming the public through fake news.

There are two very interesting stories that found three world television news networks entangled in a professional quagmire. When the former U.S President, Donald Trump lost the 2021 Presidential election, he and his supporters refused to concede defeat, alleging that the election was rigged by the Democrats to give President Joe Biden a landslide win. President Trump vehemently propagated the narrative of vote rigging so much so that on January 6, 2022, he mobilised his supporters to “move down to the Capitol in order to secure their stolen win from the Democrats.” This tantamounted to an insurrection, according to the Democrats culminating into impeaching Trump on two trials, which impeachment he survived.

However, whereas U.S Central News Network (CNN) and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) out rightly rejected and rubbished Trump’s narrative of a rigged election, Fox News Corporation, another big news network in the U.S, propagated the same claim in support of Trump’s narrative. Fox News alleged that the voting machines used by Dominion voting system in the U.S were faulty and that this was deliberately done to the detriment of Trump in order to give Biden a win, a narrative Fox News knew was wrong according to CNN and Democrats. No wonder, as CNN spent all the four years of Trump’s Presidency on negative publicity and characterisation of Trump in particular to the extent that Trump coined the term ‘fake news’ used by Democrats to witch-hunt him, Fox News is doing the same negative publicity of President Biden showing how he is not mentally fit to sit in the oval office, only looking out for particular incidents where he falls short of his mental or physical ability.

Dominion sued Fox News in court on charges of defamation and demanded compensation in damages amounting to 1.6 Billion U.S Dollars. Last month on April 18, Fox News confessed to the defamation case and accepted to pay damages worth $787.5ms. Fox News is being punished for engaging in a disinformation campaign. Earlier, author Deborah Davis had published a book which revealed America’s “Mockingbird Project.”

According to this publication, Mockingbird project is a camouflage project in which the “U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recruits American journalists into a political and geopolitical propaganda network” and that the CIA “manipulates American news media organisations for propaganda purposes.” Thus “many CNN and some BBC journalists are on CIA payroll” according to Davis.

It is alleged that CIA is using this Mockingbird operation to pay some CNN and BBC journalists reporting on Russia-Ukraine war to engage in a disinformation campaign and give distorted information or propaganda about the war, aimed at propagating the US and UK interests and their allies in this protracted war, showing that President Putin is losing the war, that Russia has lost tens of thousands of troops, etc.

It is also alleged that CNN and BBC carefully choose and host so-called military and policy analysists who risk intellectual dishonesty and instead propagate the U.S propaganda and interests about the Russia-Ukraine while concealing vital facts.

No wonder since the war begun whoever CNN or BBC hosts to talk about the Russia-Ukraine is against the war, shows how President Putin is losing the war, how the sanctions are deeply biting Russia’s economy, how Ukraine has managed to fight back Russian troops, and supporting the US and UK to continue arming Ukraine.

This propagation is the opposite when Fox News hosts its so-called analysts. These usually try to show the mistakes of President Zelensky and his U.S and British allies, how President Putin is winning the war, how Zelensky and American military personnel are involved in heavy corruption scandals while masquerading in funding of this war, etc.

As expected, CNN, BBC, Whitehouse, and the Pentagon remained tight-lipped about the report that these journalists are paid by CIA. It should be recalled that both the U.S and UK or generally NATO used CNN and BBC to spread the narrative that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify US invasion of Iraq, a lie both countries later confessed arguing that they acted on wrong intelligence reports.

This kind of press capitalism is somehow apparent in Uganda’s media space. It is almost a ritual that whoever is hosted at the Central Broadcasting Service (CBS) radio or TV Telefayina, both belonging to Kabaka’s Mengo government must sound anti-government or anti-National Resistance Movement (NRM), must lambaste NRM or President Museveni as opposed to discussing issues at hand in a logical and balanced manner. Likewise, there are some radio and TV stations where the so-called analysts are NRM-heavy just in blind support of NRM deeds and misdeeds, etc.

In this era of media pluralism, multiculturalism and political hybridity, once media houses become accomplices to political and geopolitical battles, they are directly positioning themselves in the right target of fire and political persecution and in that they will be perceived as political mercenaries within the geopolitical theatre and humanly speaking prudence would not sympathise with them.

In this era of digital media pluralism: social media in particular where many people have become pseudo-journalists and can write and disseminate anything, the only fall-back by professional journalists is to remain professional, ethical, balanced in their reporting, accurate in their facts whilst being mindful of the cultural, political, and economic implications of their content.

The writer is educational policy analyst