Cleansing the entire professional environment!

The professional environment in which the media operates in Cameroon is fast becoming a cause for concern.

It is as if legislation on media issues can hardly go through or when it gets through huge logjams are immediately pulled out and placed on the way, preventing it to function normally. In the past few years we have seen a veritable ping-pong game between government and different professional bodies trying to obtain some framework in the name of laws within which journalists can effectively work.

It failed. Then government and the professional milieu went into a strange bed partnership of sorts after the December 2012 National Forum on Communication, hoping to find some modus operandi in which neither government nor the profession would feel that it had given in too much to the other side.

Even then things are not at their best. The recurring question of the definition of who is journalist or not was addressed at that forum, putting an end to the existence of a press card commission which had been in force but which was widely ignored by the professional milieu because of the haphazard manner in which it worked and the lack of seriousness about the way it selected candidates for ownership of the said card.

A new and invigorated Press Card Commission was introduced at the 2012 Forum and the same fate was being thrown on it because of its delay in taking off until early 1015 when its members were designated by the Minister for Communication and formally commissioned on July 8, 2015 in Yaounde.

It took another five months for the new Commission to start work when in November it announced its intention to deliver the first card with February 26, 2016 set as the deadline for the submission of files. Reaction was timid, forcing the commission to extend the deadline. But even then reaction is no better as only very few professional journalists and other workers of the media sector have cared to turn in their files for accreditation.

This apathetic behaviour of most professionals calls for some remarks. First of all, the card has been presented as a must document for all those operating in the media sector and will henceforth be required for all those attending media events such as press conferences, interviews and other open manifestations.

That may help keep away many”instant” journalists who flood events, making it sometimes difficult for real professionals to work. But the card may only be useful in keeping away quack journalists from events. When we fathom that the worst evils inflicted on Cameroonian journalists have not necessarily come from this category of journalists, then there is much cause for concern.

Many of these quacks, writing from their bedrooms or even in newsrooms and mounting up their material for direct printing may never ever need a press card. Without undermining the usefulness of the press card, it is necessary to address other areas where the image of the press is very seriously being tarnished.

That looks like the most urgent thing to do given the huge muddle piled up by years of disorderliness and disregard for any modicum of respect for this noble profession.