From The Gambia's The Daily News:

Kudos to Fatou Camara for Jammeh-Media forum, but….
  
africa » gambia
 Monday, March 21, 2011
Kudos to Fatou Camara, the newly appointed Director of Press and Public Relations at State House for achieving within a week of her appointment what all those before her failed to achieve, which is to bring together President Jammeh and journalists of the private media under one roof to discuss pertinent issues.
While it may be too early in the day to guess whether the timing of the meeting was prompted by current events in North Africa or it was a genuine attempt on the part of the regime to dialogue with such an important segment of the society, but Fatou still deserves some commendation for no doubt being instrumental to bringing it about.
There is certainly an indication of some sincerity on Fatou’s part to realize an improvement in relations between the private media and the executive, which had continuously seen a downward slide since 1994. 
It is quite apparent that those who had occupied the position before her had never mustered the courage that she had to convince President Jammeh of the need to meet the journalists.
While President Jammeh, as expected, used the occasion to re-iterate his ever-readiness to punish journalists who criticize him, but the very fact that he agreed to hold his first such meeting with journalists of the private media for more than 15 years, is an apparent indication that he has realized that it is not in the interest of his regime to maintain that belligerent attitude and continue to see the journalists as tools of the West, always ready to use all available means to pull him down.
We can therefore hope and pray that after this meeting, he would henceforth not regard the journalists as monsters but just ordinary citizens who, like all sincere Gambians, want the best for this country.
It is also quite an achievement to hear President Jammeh acknowledge that the press has a positive role to play in national development, which had never been acknowledged before by his regime. He and other members of the regime had always treated the private press as mere tools of western hegemony bent on destabilizing the regime.
While President Jammeh also should be commended for agreeing to the meeting with the journalists, it was however disappointing to hear him also use the occasion to bash at the media. Everyone expected him to be much more reconciliatory in his response to the concerns expressed by the journalists, but instead, he as usual seems to have been speaking above the heads of the journalists, using such terms as “I will deal with you…”, “when you cross the line…”, “I will never compromise national security..”, as well as “I will not listen to any Westerner”, giving the impression that the private media is under the control of the West instead of being owned and managed by responsible Gambians who are just as concerned about the peace and stability of this country as he.
He also repeated his regime’s age-old misconception that Gambian journalists write negative articles about the regime only to get visas from western embassies. He however failed to realize that all the media chiefs who were at that meeting with him had been all over the world and if they had any inclination to go into exile, they would never have been at that meeting.
Therefore, it is time that President Jammeh and his regime accepted that Gambian journalists are not only guided by the principles of journalism in doing their work, but they are also quite responsible to allow anyone outside to control them.
One other possible positive outcome of the meeting is President Jammeh’s emphasis that his government has no policy in place that prevents public officials from speaking to the media. While most of those who spoke on the government’s side emphasized the need for journalists to get their facts right, but they failed to accept the fact that if the public officials are afraid to speak to them about any issue in their domain, then it would be impossible for the journalists to get those ‘facts’ that they constantly referred to. 
We can therefore hope that henceforth the public officials will muster the courage to talk to the media about issues pertaining to their departments and responsibilities without fearing being punished for it. 
While the media chiefs, during their meeting with President Jammeh, had no doubt raised quite pertinent issues, especially the inherent problems of access to information being encountered by members of the private media, with the exception of Daily Observer, but two other issues that needed to have been given much emphasis during the discussion, which were alluded to by Sam Sarr, were the failure of the regime to give due attention to the investigations into the killing of Deyda Hydara and the disappearance of Chief Ebrima Manneh. While no one has yet come up with any tangible evidence as to who may have killed Deyda Hydara or whether Chief Manneh is being held by government agents, but as Gambians, whatever happened to them is the responsibility of the government to investigate and come to a logical conclusion, which the government has woefully failed to do. 
While Vice President Isatou Njie-Saidy was quick to emphasize that the government went to sympathize with the Hydara family after Deyda’s death, but the issue of concern to journalists is the regime’s lack of interest in mounting a credible investigation into his killing, just as they are expected to do for any other Gambian who is killed in such circumstances. One would therefore wonder why the regime has chosen to adopt such a posture in the case of Deyda.
President Jammeh was also quoted pointing out the proliferation of media outlets since his regime came to power, both print and electronic, which he said goes to vindicate his government in terms of press freedom, noting that this was not the case before. He then pointed out that if his government does not want the press, it would not have allowed the operation of these outlets, given the fact that it is the government that issued licences, and hence none of them could have operated without a licence.
However, he failed to add that those media houses risk being arbitrarily closed down if they write or broadcast programmes that are not palatable to the regime. A recent case in point was the closure of Teranga FM for merely reviewing the newspapers in the local languages. 
We can also recall that those were similar reasons that led to the closure of Citizen FM and Sud FM, as well as the arbitrary closure of The Independent newspaper and The Standard without any court order. 
Therefore, while the regime would tolerate as many media houses as possible as long as they conform to certain norms acceptable to the authorities, but they would not hesitate to close down those that fail to adhere to the strict self-censorship regime that has been forced on them. 
As a result for instance, all the private radio stations have been reduced to mere entertainment and commercial avenues and none of them now dares to discuss political issues or even carry uncensored independent news of their own.
If the regime is indeed sincere in opening the media space and respecting the constitutional provisions of allowing divergent views to be aired, then all media outlets should be allowed to use all available legal means to inform the public rather than being subjected to such unfair restrictions or being arbitrarily closed down merely for doing exactly that.
Also, as per Section 108 of the Constitution, “All state owned newspapers, journals, radio and television shall afford fair opportunities and facilities for the presentation of divergent views and dissenting opinion” which the government should respect rather than continuing to use the public media as mere propaganda tools of the APRC.  
“If I think that the whole government is APRC, I’m making a great mistake,” President Jammeh was quoted saying, but in reality, there is a clear indication that there is hardly any distinction between what belongs to the state and what belongs to the APRC. A good case in point is the fact that Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS) behaves more like an APRC propaganda organ than a public broadcaster, paid and maintained by the Gambian tax payers.  For instance, any event of the APRC, no matter how trivial, is treated as front page news while there is hardly ever any positive mention of the opposition as if they are non-Gambians who have no stake in the public media. 
Therefore, if President Jammeh and his regime were indeed interested in responsible journalism rather than just praise singing, they should have insisted on the GRTS serving all Gambians rather than just the APRC and the ruling clique. 
As long as such an untenable situation persists, no one would ever be convinced of the regime’s adherence to press freedom and the rule of law.

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