Mr Gassama,

It seems you still dont want to accept the reality.
All i was donig was try to make you understand that
the media today is faced with more problems than
imigine. When you said "the articles being published
today would have landed many a journalist in jail for
during the ppp era" , i thought you were going to give
us the articles concerned because i have been a
practising journalist well before the current regime
came to power and i know what we at New Citizen
Newspaper have been publishing...people like Pa Samba
Jaw, Ebrima Sankareh etc who were working with us and
i think they are members of L can tell you how we were
although the sstruggle had always been there to report
the stories as they were. So you cannot rewrite
history when all of us are alive and when even the
people we wre reporting on are also here.

Again am happy that you know that most of us are
risking our lives for people like you to make informed
choices on critical issues of great concern to the
public that would have otherwise been under the
carpet. If you think that the freedom that you always
parrot on the L had been there why the risk to one's
life? This brings me to the arrests and
detentions....Gassa, just imigine, somebody you've
been arresting for eleven times and you had never
taken that person to court to proof your case, surely
commonsense should conclude that something is
definately wrong with that system. Am not saying that
journalsits were/are always right but if for seven
years journalists have been the subject of open
vilification as illelegitimate sons of Africa;enemies
of progress; agents of the west; and so on and so fort
and yet no iota of proof could be deduced then
conventional wisdom have it that we question the
genuineness of the accusers.

You said "as far as i am concerned, the abject
poverty, ill health and ignornace in our midst is more
of the priority than the utopian state that some you
believe we can attain while we this poor". What a
stange posture coming from someone who says he
recognises the rights of every individual to a
breeding space. Gassa what you failed to understand is
that all the above cannot be fulfilled without a well
informed, enlightened, educated citizenery. The role
of an unfettered press in all this for people to make
informed choices even for the type of poverty
alluviation programme that they want for themselves
cannot be over-emphasised. But if we you think that
everybody's rights should be kept on being violated
before we can get to the place we are aspiring for our
country, then you are making a fool of yourself. As
Kofi Annan himself said just two months ago "genocide
begins with the abuse of an individual's rights" so if
we can avoid this to the minimum, the better for us.
As somebody once told you on this forum, other
countries have gone too far by guranteeing the rights
of even ants...am wandering why some of you people are
happy when you see your critics arrested or their
rights abused. Probably what you fail to understand is
that journalists have more stake in the peace and
stability of this country than most you who. What has
to undertood though is that you cannot continue to
hammer on the peace and stability when people live in
constant fear, when people are arrested for flimsy
reasons , when people cannot speak their mind for fear
of being arrested and detained.

I hope you understand the development of the media
thoughout Africa generally. The boom in the number of
newspapers and private radio stations in the country
has to be understood within the context that in the
early 1990s, Gambia like all other African countries
libralised their frequencies for greater competition
in the information and communication market while at
the same time, the period show the quick start in the
country of desk-top publishing thanks to computers.
Therefore even if the ppp government were in power,
they could not go contrary. Infact the first ever
private station in this part of Africa was established
in the Gambia some 30 years ago-Radio Syd. Also
journalists have been the consistent groug of
professionals who even during the ppp era dared their
so-called powers. If there is no change in our
stance...we are what we were.

The decrees 70/71 that you always refer to here but
never give the explainations to their background are
indeed obstacles to the freedom of the press... why
should have been there in the first place? Gassa
reason please. For your information, as journalists we
dont create the news we report the news...so we dont
have to submit ourselves to anyone's pressure.You
either like us for what we are or you hate us for what
we are period!!!

In the meantime, just as i am about to finish my
response, a colleague who read your posting and who
you always share jokes with has just phoned me on my
mobile to ask whether you are still "at it"....the
usual argument and debate with people?




 --- Jungle Sunrise <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >
Mr. Sillah,
>
> Thank you for joining the ongoing debate about the
> freedom of the press
> during the past 7 years as compared to yester-years.
> I for one will never
> deny that there had been problems between the
> present government and the
> "private" media. My emphasis during this debate will
> be mainly on the
> "Private" media as the public media during the first
> republic was virtually
> non-existent and therefore not worth comparing and
> contrasting with what
> prevails as of now.
>
>

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