Journalist Integrity and Press Freedom in Tanzania
By Rachel Mkundai

In a country like mine, it is difficult to define what independence of the press is. Universally, it means media being allowed to report truthfully on societal issues - good or bad, that are of public interest.

We have the freedom of press at home, which is not gagged by the government but rather by other things, which are as bad. To begin with, the media industry in Tanzania was only liberalized about 10 years ago. We used to only have the ruling party and government-owned papers and radio, which were the machine propaganda for the powers that be.

It was only in 1995 that we got the first private TV station in mainland Tanzania, under IPP media. By then the Zanzibar Isles already had has one national owned TV station.

Today Tanzania enjoys more than 400 newspapers mostly in the national language Kiswahili. Most of these newspapers based in Dar es Salaam. We have more than 10 TV stations, dozen radio stations in a span of less than two decades. It is a remarkable achievement.

Unfortunately, almost all the media houses have one thing in common: all they care about are the advertisers above all. They are the ones that keep the papers afloat. Tycoons with political affiliations or business interests to protect own most of the papers and TV/Radio stations. It is not surprising that you will hardly come across a case of corruption being reported in the media unless the media owner has approved it.

Correspondents go for up to six months without pay. And it is not the situation with just one house, but many. In fact, media owners in Tanzania have killed journalism and what we have in the papers are mainly ‘advertorials.’

Journalists and correspondents go out to hunt for stories where the sources are willing to pay. Many NGOs press conferences takes place in Dar es Salaam, where envelopes stuffed with cash are dished out. This is the kind of the press freedom that we have.

I have seen correspondents cry at the accounts offices of media houses, pleading for the peanuts they get, which sometimes is delayed even for a year. It is terrible. Under such a horrible environment, envelope journalism has become the only way out for scribes. Integrity loses meaning in the face of hunger and ridicule.

Survival means foregoing your integrity or else if you love the job too much there must be another job going hand in hand with journalism.

There is no union to protect journalists. That is the kind of freedom we have. But thank God at least we have peace.

On the part of government to control the media, the private electronic media is allowed to air their programmes in only 25 per cent of the country. At the same time the language must be either English or Swahili, which are foreign and not understood by many people in the remote areas.

The Defamation Act is painful to publishers while a person is free to demand any amount of money to be paid. For instance recently the former OAU general Secretary Salim Ahmed Salim demanded 1bn/- Tanzanian money (1m USD) from the regional newspaper The East Africa for misquoting him.

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