A few weeks before Christmas Holiday recess, cabinet took a decision to effectively blacklist some media houses using advertising. By word of mouth and without bothering to give any reasons, government departments and related agencies were instructed not to deal with certain arbitrarily picked media houses. The stealth nature of the decision underscores its evil intentions. Officially and at face value, the decision is informed by a need to save public money. It is a fallacy. And we have been through it all before.
Like the ones before it, Government’s current rationing of advertising is not only illegal and illogical, it also smacks of intolerance. Concerted reluctance by government to come out into the open and explain the decision to those affected can only highlight swathes of bad faith informing that decision. It is a dark decision taken in darkness by men and women who like that decision want to remain in darkness themselves. To the men and women in cabinet, goaded on by some of their most depraved spin doctors, the private media, or at least a significant part of it, has since become a legitimate target. This follows an electoral disaster by the ruling party at the polls last year. Instead of the ruling party accepting that its current policy of exclusion simply had no chance in the face of a cohesive and much more resurgent opposition, blame is now being shifted on some sectors of the private media for simply doing their job.
Quite undeservedly, the private media is being accused of aiding and abetting the opposition. The media, we want to point out is only a scapegoat. Though by and of itself not new, Government latest treatment of the media is yet another example that they have run out of ideas. Not for the first time they have resorted to lies, deceit and trickery. Dishonesty, bad faith and deceit can be the only reasons why such a far reaching decision is communicated to so many people and so many agencies by word of mouth and not by writing; trying every trick in the book not to leave any paper trail. Government decision is an unmitigated assault on our time-tested traditions of open debate, free speech and exchange of ideas.
By arbitrarily starving some media houses of advertising, Government want all newsrooms to conform to a straitjacket editorial policy prescribed by the ruling party and enforced by government spin doctors, some of who unashamedly call themselves journalists. For their part and in response to this brazen assault, the media has to play a long game. And in a way the affected media houses are already showing that we are in it for a long haul. Instead of behaving like crybabies, many of them are putting on strong faces. As we have said so many times in the past we should wear the humiliation we are being continually subjected to by this government with pride, knowing very well that governments, like politicians that run them come and go, as will the BDP government when its times is up. Following its worst showing in fifty years, the BDP is for the first time in the defensive.
Though not yet in control, reformists inside the party have an upper hand – politically and morally. They are well awake to the fact that theirs is a sinking ship. Hard-line tactics deployed by President Ian Khama and his inner circle have not worked. If anything they have plunged the party into an abyss. To now turn around and accuse the media of problems besieging their party is to deny the fact that there are many things that the party has to do differently going forward. More insulting is to say the media is chiefly responsible for the elections outcome last year where the party had such a terrible showing. That in a very trivial way underestimates the intelligence of thousands of Batswana who went out to cast their votes in the manner that they did. The media problem, if it can be called so was simply to point out the ruling party’s Achilles Heels in the build up to the General Elections last year. If that is a crime, then perhaps the media should own up and admit as well as confess to the offence. It is instructive, in fact gratifying how the media has with the exception of a few of them who are still consumed by excitement at news of being branded as “approved” – responded to this attack.
In a rare sign of maturity for a profession generally characterized by factitious petty jealousies, the media has responded by establishing a united front made up of an archipelago of synergies. For some of us who have spent inordinate lengths of time trying to unify practitioners of our trade this rare development is indeed heartening and encouraging. And that alone is much more important and indeed much more fulfilling than the money we are currently denied by the evil and unprovoked advertising boycott visited upon our media houses. With this first edition of the year, we wish all our readers a happy and eventful year.
