By Umaru Fofana
If you believe some members of the Government of Sierra Leone – some say so in public while others do it discreetly – this country is better off without true journalism and honest journalists. All they prefer are those who write articles eulogising those in authority and broadcast news in their honour as if worshipping them.
If these same people had their way they would remove the metaphor in George Orwell's Animal Farm and make his words hold literally: “Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. No animal shall wear clothes. No animal shall sleep in a bed...” The only rule in the animal kingdom that they would rather read figuratively in stead of literally is “All animals are equal”. And if it must be literal then “some are more equal than others” will quickly follow. NEVER!
I have said before and I will reiterate that if Siaka Stevens were to come back alive today to rule Sierra Leone again he would not survive for a week. So whoever is in public office and wishes to suppress journalists like Stevens did, they have an option. To disappear themselves from the face of the earth.
Sierra Leone would not be what it is today had it not been for the role its media played during its rebel war and when democracy was hijacked. And I am not saying this because I am a journalist. It is a statement of fact. The only profession that surpasses journalism, to my mind, is the military. Theirs is the only job one signs up to with the avowed commitment to die to let others live. But our armed forces betrayed this country and its people as recently as in the 1990s. And journalists stepped in to rescue the people and bring back democracy. We know why some of those in authority today hate us. Because we stood up to them, or their interest, when they used a short cut to power the first time round. We shall not fail to do so against elected officials whenever they derail. We will not allow our country to go down the path of the past. We will continue to speak out. War time or peace time. They had better build more prisons.
Talking about war and peace, one of those whose roles in bringing back democracy and peace will forever be legendary is Dr Julius Spencer. He was Sierra Leone's Minister of Information from 1998 – 2001. He had been a journalist before. And had been jailed for publishing the truth. He has, since resigning as minister, returned to media business. He co-owns the Premier Media Group which, among other things, owns and operates a radio station, Premier Talk Radio.
One thing he did as minister was that which was to later rescue him in his private life. In the present light of public officials issuing diatribes against the media and feeling so megalomaniac that they can threaten journalists with utter monstrosity, that singular action by Spencer should serve as a lesson for anyone who is in public office and cares to listen. Nothing lasts forever, the old saying goes.
A couple of years ago, or so, Dr Spencer's radio put out an honest and highly professional journalism piece which the Government apparently found repugnant. The next minute, Ibrahim Ben Kargbo (now sacked Minister of Information) was on another radio station threatening, very unambiguously, that he would shut down Premier Talk Radio. That was a bogus threat. But a threat nevertheless.
Kargbo had forgotten, not known to be phlegmatic, that the threat was phoney. He had no such powers. Spencer, therefore, shrugged off the threat. His firewall was that which he had created when he was minister.
As minister, Spencer had worked with IB Kargbo who was President of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists, and other stakeholders to establish a system whereby power-drunk megalomaniacs in power would not just wake up one morning and start shutting down radio stations or newspapers simply because they did not like what was being published.
Just ignore the irony in this for now and let us talk about how power can corrupt people in this country to the extent they see the media only as friendly or nationalistic when journalists fail in performing their function honestly and become sycophants and praise-singers.
As a victim of criminal and seditious libel law, Spencer wanted to get rid of this stupid law. As a journalist at the New Breed newspaper, he had been arrested and locked up for merely reproducing a factually correct story a European newspaper had published about the sale of our diamonds in Antwerp by the then military strongman Cpt Valentine Strasser. Once he was made minister, he moved to establish the Independent Media Commission as a first step towards decriminalising libel. The backward constitutional power in the hands of the government through the minister of information to shut down media houses was transferred to the IMC. If Spencer had not done that, his radio would have been shut down and he would have kicked himself in the foot for not having addressed that problem when he was in the position to do so.
Whoever thinks Sierra Leone can move forward by suppressing free press and intimidating journalists is living in a fool's paradise. A nation that does not respect the dictates of the Chapultepec Declaration will always slide back to instability and insanity. Chapultepec Castle is in Mexico City. In 1994 a landmark declaration came into force there to underscore the importance of a free media. There, the ten fundamental principles for a press press to function, were born. The core of that declaration was that no law or act of government should come into force if it seeks to limit freedom of expression or of the press.
If it is true that “Freedom must not be restricted in the quest for any other goal” and that “it belongs to citizens not to governments” then an independent media is needed in any society that calls itself civilised if only for freedom of expression to be guaranteed.
The declaration says, among other things, that “Without an independent media, assured of guarantees to operate freely, to make decisions and to act on them fully, freedom of expression cannot be exercised”. It goes on to say that “A free press is synonymous with free expression”.
It is unthinkable to begin to imagine that a people can be free without a free press. NOTE: “The exercise of this freedom is not something authorities grant, it is an inalienable right of the people”. How can anybody, reasonable, tag as pro-opposition and seek to destroy any media outlet that holds the feet of the authorities to the fire. Let us even assume pro-opposition they are, why not also tag the others as being “pro-establishment” and excoriate them? This is nothing short of discrimination. One of the ten principles of the Chapultepec Declaration is that “The media and journalists should nether be discriminated against nor favoured because of what they write or say”, hardly does a day pass by here without some form of intimidation against journalists by one side of the political divide or the other. Some even wish us dead. And ironies abound.
Before you get me badly wrong, I believe in the press being honest and fair and impartial. But those who shout at others for perceptibly being otherwise are the most guilty of this. Their utterances and publications about people and issues are half-truths, at best. They are not fair to them and do not respect their right of reply. “The credibility of the press is linked to its commitment to truth, to its pursuit of accuracy, fairness and objectivity and to the clear distinction between news and advertising”. But to those who accuse others, they advertise for politicians or commercial entities yet they decry others of being bad. What irony!
Following a cultural organization seminar in 1991 on the promotion of an independent and pluralistic African Press in Namibia, came into being the watershed Windhoek Declaration. Paul Kamara, now a Government Minister, signed on behalf of Sierra Leone. And it is amazing how they are all in authority today and the media is facing such open bad-mouthing, confrontation and intimidation by a government official without speaking out.
The Windhoek Declaration, facilitated and witnessed by UNESCO, declares that a “free press is essential to the development and maintenance of democracy in a nation, and for economic development”. And the content goes further to define an independent press as “a press independent from governmental, political or economic control or from control of materials and infrastructure essential for the production and dissemination of newspapers, magazines and periodicals”. So how can anyone begin to think that we must all be subservient to their political and economic interests otherwise we are deemed subversive!
President Koroma would be the biggest buffoon of all of this country's leaders – past and future – if he thought that all journalists must always be singing his praise even where his government was floundering. If that was what had happened in the lead up to his 2007 election victory, his insurance company would have crumbled by now.
That Declaration called for African countries to “provide constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press and freedom of association”. Here we are with our obnoxious seditious libel law still dangling over our head and government officials and their apologists even in the media defending its retention. What a country! What a people! Left with them they would suffocate democracy if only for their own survival.
But I leave you with a part of the preamble to the Chapultepec Declaration: “Without democracy and freedom, the results are predictable: Individual and social life is stunted; group interaction life is curtailed, material progress is distorted, the possibility of change is halted, justice is demeaned and human advancement becomes a mere fiction”. The Sierra Leone press shall be free.
