The shit has hit the fan

So far, only George Ngwane and Tricia Oben have indicated certain worries about the sledge hammer that fell on CRTV Buea’s flagship programme, Press Club, recently banned at the behest of Southwest Governor about a month ago.

Before the ban in question, my good friend, Franklin Sone Bayen, had printed information to the effect that I, Charles Ndi Chia, was something of a bitter opponent of media self-regulation. His newspaper, “Media People” quoted me as saying that only the National Communication Council has a right and the duty to regulate the media.

I have since written back, referring to that assertion as preposterous and expect his newspaper to tidy the issues. I have spent a professional lifetime crusading for self-regulation. I intend to return to this point much later.

When he wrote, George wondered why media practitioners were so quiet in the face of the crude ban of a programme that was not only popular, but also articulated objective and responsible views. He stopped short of complaining that while a good programme like Press Club was being banned, the gutter press was having something of a field day.

Tricia on her part wrote inter-alia: “When the Southwest Regional Secretary of the National Commission on Human Rights, Christopher Tambe Tiku, during an edition of Press Club, vociferously and openly accused the Southwest Governor, Bernard Okalia Bilia, of promoting land-grabbing by creating new villages and appointing their chiefs with the sole purpose of giving them CDC land and then turning around and taking huge chunks for themselves, everyone held their breath. Journalists who were supposed to pick up the baton and investigate went quiet…”

Well, by writing this way, Tricia herself was, even if just inadvertently, questioning our own ability or even resolve to protect our own. But poor Tricia and George! With a good part of the media now involved in one form of “ugly” practice or the other, (apologies to Choves Loh) or better still, playing the “Journalist Iscariot” just for something less than the biblical thirty pieces, how did they expect for there to be any spontaneous voice of dissent?

Truth is, whereas media have been known to bring about progressive change in society and helped to change perceptions, some of them have also been collaborators in unspeakable atrocities as committed by the very ones they should be check-mating.

For example; how about the propensity these days to create saints from devils? I mean the deification of well known, nay, well established treasury looters and guttersnipes, and conferring on them the so called Man of the Year Awards.

The credibility, or why not, legitimacy of the media is, or should be seen in the public duties they perform rather than the beggarly awards they conjure. The media would have lost the credibility and trust that they are endowed with by the time they are seen to be indiscriminately apportioning small potatoes to money-bags and other nattering nabobs.

And such media can never be said to be socially responsible when they cover up the “grab and grab quickly” syndrome of the Bakweri patrimony, for example.

Give it to Tricia when she wonders how, by succumbing to authorities, the media is not playing their role to deliver Cameroon to democracy come 2035. After all, isn’t it often said that the centre piece of constitutional democracy is the free flow of information?

Let me ask those I think are my colleagues the following question… Do we just put our by-lines on press releases, brown envelopes or “gombo” packages and smile, sing the praises of the awfully corrupt all the way? The answer is blowing in the wind.

Otherwise, if we must be the platform of public space, we must change the way we tell our story; reorganise and narrow the public space as it were.

We must create conversation between the citizens and the State, just like the now crucified CRTV Buea Press Club did for eight years without reproach, until some skeleton-infested cupboards were rattled.

Like George Ngwane has always been harping and Tricia Oben hinted in her last write-up, we ought to find the information that the people need and get it out to them, even if in the process we inadvertently step on jigger-infested political toes. We ought to be actors in the building of citizens’ agenda as opposed to parochial ones.

Some time ago, in April 2011, I asked my good old friend, Issa Tchiroma Bakari, during lunch that was offered us by the British and Canadian High Commissioners to Cameroon; who it was that bribes journalists.

He didn’t quite give me a clear-cut answer. Rather, he babbled on the need to cultivate what I agreed with him to be the powerful important voice of quality journalism. I told him, for effect, about how Government officials have been always quick to challenge the ethics of our journalism. Yet, they are the first to splash the shit and pay gullible hacks to clean it.

Today, I ask him…how does this Government of which he is the spokesperson, deal with those of its members accused of grabbing and banning. Beating the child and refusing it the right to tears if you will.

Back to my small friend’s rather strong charge that I am not for self-regulation. Many decades after I shed my milk teeth in the profession, I realised that one doesn’t really recover as a human person once his or her dignity or integrity is undermined, even if the one goes to equity.

By the same token, I hold that in as much as one’s good name is like a sellable commodity on which he or she can tag a price, one ceases to be entitled to a good name if he or she decides to live on the frontiers of decency.

I BELIEVE in and SUBSCRIBE to self-regulation. I believe that democracies are noisy places and that they are so because of freedom of speech. If the media are scrupulous and reliable in the performance of their constitutional obligations, they will invigorate and strengthen what is, by all means, a reluctant democracy.

If they vacillate in the performance of their duty, their constitutional goals would have been imperiled, giving adult delinquents a field day, all the way.

Defending media freedoms and raising media standards at the same time is absolutely important. Correcting our own mistakes when we make them is of equal importance. And that too, is part of self regulation.

For journalists to hold anyone to account, (like those who publish “UPSCORE and DOWNSCORE”) we should, by the law of reciprocity, be prepared to hold ourselves to the same account. Hence, also allowing independent regulatory intervention, especially in cases where we have simply taken press freedom as wild license.

As it presently stands, our society in general and media in particular hardly upholds basic concepts of taste and decency, morality and accuracy. This is why I humbly submit that the shit has, indeed, hit the fan!

Cheers and let’s keep suffering and smiling! Otherwise,