THE PRESS At a party in Dares-Salam a few years ago, three Tanzanian journalists argued fiercely about an important issue affecting their work at that moment. Reports were coming in of a village settlement scheme that had failed badly. Large sums of money had been lost, and villagers who had been brought to the scheme had left. What should journalists do about the story? Should they investigate it or should they leave well alone? Were there any other alternatives? The first journalist said that they should ignore the story. The government and the ruling party had only just launched the pollicy of
Ujamaa villages involving peasants in communal agriculture. It was a difficult policy to put over and many people were suspicious, even afraid of it. To the report, the failure of an earlier attempt at village settlement would not help to persuade people that moving into villages was a good idea. (The government had tried ever since independence to move people away from scatter homesteads into villages where communal services could be provided). An unfavourable report now would reinforce existing doubts and might well sway the undecided against the policy.The concern of journalists to tell the truth, he said, should always be tempered with concern at the likely effects of reporting certain kinds of information. To report failures like this would only spread 'confusion' at a time when the government was launching a political education campaign through the party and the mass media to encourage positive attitudes toward living in villages. His view was therefore that any investigation should be left to the party and the government.
The second journalist disagreed. It was not, he said, the business of the press to protect government policy. It was the press's duty to go out and investigate that story: taxpayers' money had been spent, apparently wastefully. Someone was to blame, and the press was performing a public duty if investigated and prevented the government from 'sweeping the whole story under the rug'. Good policies and appropriate decisions were always based on knowledge of the facts. If newspapers did not report facts, then how could the policy makers or the people make good decisions? The only way to be sure that government had sensible policies was to report everything connected with those policies. If the press worked hand-in-hand with the government so that it hushed up embarrassing stories when the government felt it expedient to do so, then the press was failing in its duty.
The third journalist took a view quite different from his two colleagues. He agreed that the press had to say something about the story. Apart from anything else, it had reported the scheme with a great fanfare when it had been launched. It would do the credibility of the press great harm to ignore things when they went sour. If journalists wanted what they wrote to be believed, then they had to report the bad as well as the good. If bad news was not reported, this would only encourage the spread of misinformation and rumour.
There was another reason why the press should report this story. It had a duty to investigate what went wrong so that lessons would be learned by everyone concerned. But everything should be written with great care. Tanzanaian journalists had to be conscious of the effects of what they wrote. Journalists had no business campaigning against elected governmeent and it was legitimate on the government of Tanzania to expect cooperation fom the press. The government's policies on village settlement were designed for the interest of the poor and underprivileged and the press could help in their implementation by making sure that Tanzanians understood what was involved and what was expected of them. The conversation between the three journalists llustrates an argument that is very familiar in the third world.
Nyerere, wrote in 1966 that there had to be limit to freedom of expression. Certain principles, he thought would have to be basic to all educational and mass media activity. He justified limits not only to press freedom, but also to other important liberties, in the interest of what he saw as more important broader goals.
In other words, does freedom of speech means that in one of the poorest countries in the world people should be allowed to promote selfishness, laziness or exploitatin? Nyerere clearly thinks not, and it is that that has dominated thinking in Tanzania on the subject of the press and radioand the freedom and autonomy that thy should be allowed.
Abstract by:
Kehinde Hassan
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