World Press Day a reminder of demands of journalism

IF THE press did not exist, or was allowed to die, people would be as good as without a mirror to see themselves, being ignorant of the society they live in and unaware of the world they inhabit.

This accounts for the significance of World Press Day staking its claim on the world’s calendar on May 3. This year marked the day’s 28th anniversary, which traces its origin to the Windhoek Declaration as a statement of press freedom principles of African journalists. The declaration was produced at the Unesco seminar held in Namibia’s capital Windhoek from April 29 – May 3, 1991.

The seminar was held under the theme “promoting an independent and pluralistic African press”. This culminated in the adoption of the Declaration on May 3, subsequently declared as World Press Freedom Day.

Like the mirror, the press is fragile. Being confronted by uncomplimentary images of their misdeeds in the press is seldom the trigger for repentance for transgressors. The wayward would stop at nothing to evade, smash and conceal evidence against them, rather than mend their ways. Revelations of misdemeanours spell no deterrent for the incorrigibles. Killing the messenger becomes the necessary extra mile to travel to keep accountability at bay.

Of the many that get exposed, few take the good counsel of looking in the mirror, starting with the woman or man they see, and changing their ways. Forget not, too, those from the ranks of the media, conducting themselves as no less than the Judases of the profession, so as to betray its true codes.

Albeit well intended, the press is not without its share of bad apples with a penchant to poison the waters of its vocation, that should flow with clear, cleansing purpose. This means threats to press freedom are as much from within as they are external.

Forever hovering over the press are powerful interests, personalities, celebrities, groups, individuals, media owners, showing no respect for editorial independence – including governments. They are all forces with potential to conspire to put the press in harm’s way.

In the last words on her blog, before she died in a car bomb on October 16, 2017, Maltese journalist and anticorruption crusader behind the Panama papers, Daphne Caruana Galizia, said: “There are crooks everywhere you look.” Prior to Galizia’s demise, a government minister got the courts to freeze her accounts. Her front door was set alight, her dog’s throat was cut, she was called a witch, declared an enemy of Malta and was sent death threats.

This should not happen to anyone, any human, not to a woman. It had to be the press to tell the story of the fiery end of one of its own. This makes journalism a life-and-death undertaking against a myriad covert and overt interests in society that would wish the spotlight of truth eclipsed.

The press has shown that South Africa has not been charitable to women either. In defence of Luthuli House against the protesters, Nkateko Makele, 52, from Orange Farm had sticks and mighty kicks of enraged men raining on her even when she was on the ground on February 5, 2018. A mentally ill Soweto woman, Jostina Sangweni, 59, accused of being a witch, died from her injuries after a mob attack last month (March 26).

The tellers of such stories have sadly not been spared either. Self-exiled author and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s entrance into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul Turkey, on October 2, 2018, was his last step seen alive.

Photojournalist Anton Hammerl was killed covering conflict in Libya in 2011, the whereabouts of his mortal remains still unknown. The family have taken legal counsel with intention to approach the UN to recover his body.

Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange, who took refuge in the embassy of Ecuador in London in June 2012, remains the subject of a legal tussle in a cell in the UK, the US demanding his extradition.

Reporters Without Borders has raised alarm about the plight of a French journalist, Olivier Dubois, who was kidnapped in the northern city of Gao, in Mali.

Considering that this year’s theme for World Press Day was “information for public good”, there is no place for journalists to subject their profession to the whims of any interest group in society that distorts the gathering, packaging and dissemination of information in the service of public good.

So important is the issue of independence of the press, that it is baffling to see journalists throwing themselves into the loving arms of politicians less prone to acting for public good.

For true journalists, May 3 is a standing invitation to look into the mirror, to assess if they have not dropped the bar to conduct themselves in a manner affirmative to public good, as the profession demands.

Ngwenya is the founding secretarygeneral of the Forum of Black Journalists, writer, freelance journalist and corporate strategist.