Cameroon: Running After the Media Revolution

It used to be known as the press, then the news media, and now just the media. They all mean the same thing these days! The radio, television, newspapers or the web, are all inanimate things, but they can teach, illuminate and inspire to the extent to which the humans behind them are determined to use them to those ends.

By Tazoacha Asonganyi

Creative programmes like “ça va se savoir”, the Jerry Springer Show, Judge Judy, or Le Tribunal of Sky One Radio are all media programmes in what has become a vast-entertainment-arena-cum-media world. Some of the programmes are animated by those who have never taken a single course in journalism – on the internet, a journalist does not even need to be human; but this is no excuse to get at a programme for frivolous reasons...
New Oaths, New Pacts
With the communication revolution that has humbled even the most ardent dictators and control freaks, it is incredible how easily our new communication boss uses frivolous arguments from people who claim to want freedom from the press, to stifle freedom of the press! The man seems to be all over the place with outdated methods and approaches, urging the media to do only what he wants them to do!
When one considers the many pacts he signed, the many oaths he took and the many declarations he made in honour of freedom of the press while he was in the wilderness, and how easily he has become a turncoat and started signing new pacts, taking new oaths and making new declarations from his new station at “home”, it is difficult to believe anything he says and does!
The vehemence with which he spoke while in the wilderness is the same vehemence with which he speaks his new language so pleasing to his new soul mates!
The communication revolution is the possibility of creating new images through digital-era doctoring, live-from-everywhere satellite television, live-from-everywhere mobile telephone messages transmitted through satellite, the Web, internet and much more. The revolution can contribute to the fight against crime, but if not well managed, it could end in the futility of bad options and worse options. The bad options would be the refusal to do the right thing well, like mismanaging digital national identity cards for selfish ends of winning elections; the worse options, the wish to “control” the malleable mobile phone sector.
Indeed, with the set-up of our mobile phone market, and the extension of the Cameroon network to other countries like Nigeria, Ghana, and others, fighting crime by tracing the origin of calls can be as futile as fighting a translational disease only in one place or one country!
Govt Creating Insecurity for its Enemies?
However many colours the truth may bear, the function of journalists excludes keeping secrets; indeed, a journalist has no right to interpose a blockade between information legitimately acquired and the public they serve. For this, they usually get into trouble with power, and distinguish themselves by the courage and integrity with which they stand up to power. It would be remembered that journalists were on the “enemies” list of Nixon, unearthed during the Watergate hearings; the aim of the Nixon administration was to use government “machinery to screw our political enemies”. Since it is clear that like Nixon, the Cameroon government considers opponents, adversaries and rivals as “enemies”, the question that has not yet got an answer is whether there are appropriate measures – legislation, rules and regulations – to ensure that government does not misuse phone registers to create insecurity for its “enemies”.
Interestingly, the technology that governs mobile phone identification is the same technology that would govern identification of voters. If the government has become so caring about the security of citizens, one expects it to be equally caring about their sovereignty. This belated interest in the power of new technologies for information and communication should lead to a reawakening about the urgent need for a voters’ central database in Cameroon.
The Clock and Dagger Game
Web journalism and mobile phones have extraordinary power to conduct credible opinion polls about any type of issue, including the popularity of individual persons. The cloak-and-dagger game the CPDM is playing within its ranks with motions of support and proclamations of Paul Biya’s candidature for 2011 gives the sorry impression that they think Cameroonians do not believe that he is indeed the President of the CPDM. The macabre exercise seems to have turned into a conduit for those appointed into government to show their gratitude to the man; and for those out of government to announce their desperate presence to the man. In the process, the country’s time is wasted and the image of the country is tarnished more than they usually attribute to the opposition and those in the Diaspora.
People like our new communication boss who suddenly find themselves on the other side of the divide, usually get cynical and indulge in rhetoric based on their misunderstanding of the nature of politics and of man. Overnight, they transform themselves to high priests of their “domains”. This is why our new boss has suddenly forgotten that society – in which journalists are found – can never coincide with its political representation – the government. Journalism is the province of selfless servants of the truth. Government’s attempt to define patriotism as the singing of the praise of the government is foolhardy; so too is the attempt to seek the synthesis of the plural media landscape, that democracy makes impossible.
For journalism to thrive and play its role as the Fourth Estate, government must always remain a news subject, not a news partner! Otherwise, we may be manipulated into confusing freedom of talking with freedom of speech!