WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2009-05-18 Time: 20:00:04 Posted By: Jan
By Keineetse Keineetse
Throughout southern Africa, there are tiffs and standoffs between media practitioners and various national governments.
Most governments of this region, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Namibia and Zambia for example, do not have the freedom of information bills that compel accountability by people in authority. That, in spite of SADC’s professed commitment to an unhindered flow of information and other claims to transparent governance.
In the meantime there are tensions in most of the SADC states that indicate lack of transparency at all levels of governance. In almost all the cases the governments seek to rein the media in, so nothing critical of them is heard outside. The result is that citizenry is often forced to make choices without the facts.
In all these cases there are draconian media laws -in Botswana it is called the National Security Act – that are felt not only to be restricting to news collection and dissemination but even inimical to the cause of informing the people for which most governments will claim to have a mandate.
In part, the development is historical, for a long time governments monopolised the means of communication, often mistaking their propaganda for the process of information.
A decade ago, that was possible as technology had not availed affordable means of communication to other interest groups within society. The need to maintain secrecy by governments in the wake of the so-called cold war also made it almost sacrosanct the near total control of the means of communication which comprised radio and newspaper.
Readership itself was prepared to be nose-lead by their governments. Has the situation stayed the same? Certainly not. The last two decades has seen a phenomenal rise of independent news sources that are now contesting governmental monopoly of sourcing and dissemination of news.
Governments and leaders in government have often tried to use information systems to entrench themselves and their rule. They wish to continue to do so. Yet even in spite of everything governments do change or at least individuals in governments have continued to change. Do these changes have any thing to do with the perceptions of our consumers of ‘information’?
Are people not the doubtful species that is endowed with the faculty for the uncanny?
The history of the southern African region and that of the world has shown that governments are often not above criminal acts such as persecution and sometimes even murder of those suspected to be in opposition to them. These considerations which often bring journalists in the direct line of fire from national governments has in turn also produced the timid though sceptical media that we have. Can we improve on it?
Rather than lift the veil of secrecy that surrounds governments and their officials, especially Botswana government has compounded the situation by unrolling its own spin doctor system by which information is distilled and sanitised. Some news men and women fearing to compete, have taken the easy way out and are now seeking to get into bed with government. Or is it where they have always been? Is this a solution?
For me there is every need to create a robust and bold media that does not cringe before power as is implied by often touted fourth estate. Such media would focus on people rather than those sitting at the apex of society. There is often a hushed question asked as to who elects and mandates the media. The answer to that question is that media is part of civic society and therefore mandates itself in the name of public good. Media to a healthy democracy what polish is to shoes. Do people, ordinary citizens value democracy or not? What evidence do we have for claims of democracy? The once five yearly election queues?
In a neighbouring country media today two media personalities are being hauled over life coals and are to be tried for ‘publishing lies’ and we know that governments including that particular government publishes lies every day but no one has taken in a government for such. The way things are going, this lives only jobs in government as secure jobs. No wonder the least qualified people are running for jobs as presidents.
But do the news consumers always accept hook line and sinker the official spin without circumspection?
Governments, it is clear have their own reasons for insisting on the near total control of information because most government are engaged in activities that their own citizens may find, to say the least, quite objectionable.
For example even assuming that most white South Africans under apartheid were beneficiaries of that unjust system, it still remains unthinkable that many of them would have endorsed the mayhem that the government and the military unleashed on innocent citizens and the region generally. There are for instance issues of state security, issues of the so-called national intelligence, military undertaking which border on the sinister.
In countries where there is a clear division between the military and government the supposition is that the civil government will put the military under leash. But in southern Africa where governments are taking on the hue of military barrette the distinction is fast becoming blurred.
What do we write when it is our own nations that are doing nuclear tests that threaten the rest of human kind?
Information as image building but how does it work?
Media, real vibrant media, has become accepted around the globe as civil society and any government is also judged by its relationship with the media, and we atre not talking of Monday morning coffees with heads of state.
Government may make foolish and provocative decisions but such foolishness shall never be communicated as such – there are officers employed to give the government’s truth a final polish before it is taken to a press conference.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 15 May 2009
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200905180919.html?viewall=1