By Mubanga Mubanga
Media Owners Association of Zambia (MOAZ) vice-chairperson pastor Kennedy Mambwe has questioned the government’s claims that they are not involved in the Zambia Institute of Journalism bill, saying the validation was held in the Attorney General’s chambers
But Media Liaison Committee (MLC) member Ernest Chanda has insisted that the committee will not back out from ensuring that the Zambia Institute of Journalism bill is enacted into law.
Speaking yesterday during the Hot seat programme on Hot FM, Pastor Mambwe questioned the government’s claim that the whole bill was being pushed by the media.
“They held a validation meeting with the officials from the Ministry of Information and Media, and which meeting was chaired by the Attorney General, and this meeting was held in the Attorney General’s chamber,” pastor Mambwe said. “So when the minister (Cornelius Mweetwa) says the government is not involved, why is the Attorney General who is a chief legal advisor to the government chairing a validation meeting of a bill that has not been consultative, and has not taken care of the interest of the journalists?”
Featuring on the same programme, journalist and News Diggers Editor-In-Chief Joseph Mwenda said no independent journalists in their right state of mind could be pressuring the government to regulate them.
He added that when the government wanted to regulate the media, they did not say it openly, but used user-friendly journalists to achieve their aims.
“There is no independent journalist of sound mind who will go to the government (to say) ‘please regulate me. I am begging you to regulate me, if it fails you go back, please regulate me.’ You are pushing, as a private journalist it doesn’t make sense. What is your motivation?” Mwenda asked.
However, Mwenda argued that they were not fighting against the bill as media owners in order to be making profit at the expense of the journalists.
But in an interview with Daily Revelation, Chanda, who is a principal public relations officer in the Ministry of Transport and Logistics, said MOAZ feared that if the bill was passed they would become irrelevant.
He said this was because journalists would have a professional body which would be backed by an act of Parliament to support them.
“It’s not every media owner who is a member of the same. It’s a small group of interested colleagues who are interested in a specific thing of personal interest. They should not put a blanket statement that it’s all media owners who are against the media bill. No! It’s just a small group of interested characters, that is all,” Chanda said. “For example, I know that the owners of Daily Revelation are not part of that group. No! They are not part of that group because those are credible people. There are many other media I know whom I can’t mention, who are not part of that bogus group. That group was formed because they were pushing for the money that the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) owed them after the 2016 elections. That is the origin of that group. So at what stage do they begin to push for the welfare of journalists? All along they have pushed for their welfare.”
He said their main interest has always been business, saying former Information minister Dora Siliya urged them to lobby for their money by forming a group as opposed to seeing her one by one.
Chanda said the media owners wanted to continue eating over the heads of journalists who toiled to build their media institutions, accusing the same media owners of buying vehicles and building expensive houses out of the journalists labour.
He said they had gone ahead with their “bogus clauses” which they called media self-regulation, which were however, voluntary.
He said self-regulation had two models, which included voluntary and statutory self-regulation, saying it should not only be about the former.
“Even the donors who are funding them, the Swedish government, they know that even in Sweden they have two processes,” he said. “Tell them they are not talking to dunderheads; they are talking to enlightened people. We have also travelled the world so we know what we are talking about. And we are not backing out. You should tell them that we are not backing out.”
He accused the media owners of fighting against the dignity of journalists.
“They know that once journalists have a strong voice, they will ask for better conditions of service. They will ask for all manner of welfare that is worthy of a journalist,” Chanda said.
Chanda further said most of the media owners are “quacks”, who want to be employing quacks, and start calling them journalists.
He said some media owners have no moral right to talk about journalism as some of them had not even sat in a journalism class before.
Chanda said those who did, they went to practice public relations, and never knew what journalists went through.
“Others who were lucky went to form media institutions. And today they should lecture us about journalism, no! We have gone through struggles that they have never gone through,” said Chanda. “So we are the ones who understand the struggles. lt is about money, they don’t want to lose the donor money that they get. They don’t want to lose the recognition that they get for donors.”
On the remarks by Mwenda that the proposed bill had no provisions stating that there must be an improvement in the conditions of service for journalist, Chanda said that had not been included in the bill but they had it already in their minds once everything had been effected.
