I thought this is a good. What do my fellow post and L members think..... I
culled it from balafong
Dear Freedom,

I have been reading you for the past month and a half, logging on every day
to see the latest blaring headlines, and occasionally not turning off your
online radio broadcast when it comes on automatically. Six weeks of giving
you the benefit of the doubt, casting aside all my preconceived notions of
you and trying to read you as you mean yourself to be read: as a newspaper
out to achieve press freedom and keep an eye on the Government, in order to
bring about change in Gambia. And the results are not very impressive.

You never did learn diplomacy - this much was evident right from the
beginning of my reading. Yet even that - a lack of tact - could be excused,
if you were objective and fair in your coverage (or even tried to be), and
carried your reporting out in good faith. But you are far from that - you
are out for blood, each and every time, in each and every story, never even
pretending otherwise. In your theory of the world no one can come close to
the President (or indeed work in our government) without being irredeemably
corrupt, doing everything they do for the achievement of their own personal
interests, and against the country's. Surely only a moment's thought would
show you that this theory is too simplistic, that it pays short shrift to
all the hard-working Gambians back home, doing their bit for the country,
helping to make it better. But to insult people is one thing; to then
invite the perpetrator of the '81 coup - notable even after all this time
for its terror and brutality - to return and overthrow our Government is
something else entirely. The former is cheap tabloid behavior, execrable
yet really not harming anyone and so easy to ignore; the latter is
treasonous - not in the sense used lately to put down coup d'etats, but in
a more fundamental sense of being so blinded by your own hatred that you
would watch the motherland burn, and everything in it, without a second
thought, and actually see this as a viable solution.

The thing is, Oh Freedom, I don't think you quite understand the harm you
are causing. You think you are bringing change to the country, when in fact
what you are really doing is making it impossible to have a dialog. You are
like the drunken man at the party, shouting out proclamations and insults,
thumping your own chest and showing off just how brave you are. Everyone
who listens knows not to take you too seriously, but because your voice is
so loud it drowns out the voices of the others, who have legitimate
opinions that do not necessarily align with your scorched-earth policy. You
see conspiracies everywhere. You have made the Intelligence agencies far
more powerful than they ever could have been without you - you have
mythologized them almost: you present them as being everywhere, arresting
people who even think of thinking about dissent. By your account Gambia has
one of the worst dictatorships in the world, with ordinary Gambians always
living in fear, the regime always on the verge of being toppled, and the
country always going over to the dogs (at any minute now, you continue to
assure usassure usassure us).

There are, of course, flaws in our democracy. But this is nothing strange
-after all what country does not have its own set of flaws? Our republic is
still a very young one - we are only on our second President. And so there
are things we will have to learn together as a nation: about we the
governed, and those who govern us, and our relationship with them; as well
as obstacles we will have to overcome together, again as a Nation. We can
only do this if we are able to communicate with each other emphatically,
disagreeing with yet still respecting each other, and having the ability to
put ourselves in the other person's shoes, and see the argument as they see
it, if only for a moment. We are blest in that our culture is already
structured in this way - we go out of our way to be kind and courteous to
each other, even when we are dealing with strangers (something you could
learn a lot from, even though you exist on the Internet). But the discourse
which you promote, Oh Freedom, is anything but empathic - it is
antagonistic to the extreme, in its crude way setting up sides for each
issue that comes up, hoarding hatred and distributing it to any who are
interested to any who are interested, creating an Us-vs-Them mentality that
effectively destroys the lines of communication between the parties
involved, making it impossible to agree on anything, even if it is
beneficial to our country. You have muddied the waters, made all parties
suspicious of each other, and set us back decades in the project to achieve
a more perfect democracy. Something puzzles me: what do you think you can
achieve exactly, with such an approach? You think you can change the Gambia
by insulting anyone and everyone freely, and coming up with one conspiracy
theory after another, and continually descending to the lowest form of
tabloid sensationalism possible? How exactly is that supposed to work?

In addition to all this, you have also done journalism in the Gambia itself
a great disservice. Journalists have some of the hardest jobs in the
country, generally distrusted by the people they report on, fighting hard
to toe the thin line between providing citizens with the information they
need, and getting arrested and thrown into jail for it. Unrestricted, not
having to please any individual party, you could have been the beacon to
which all Gambian journalism turned to as guide, the example that set the
standards for generations to come. But instead, with your pointless
braggadocio and your lack of professionalism, you have brought the whole
field into disrepute, making it much easier for the government to lump all
journalists under one label, and categorize them as bad, and swaying public
opinion about journalists in a negative direction. This makes it much
harder for true journalism - the kind that thoroughly investigates stories
before publishing them, the kind that insists on objectivity and hard facts
as much as possible, the kind that people turn to for the truth when
everything else is unclear - to flourish in our country, and have a visible
impact on government affairs.

I understand that pure shock value has brought you this far, but shock
value can only get you so far, Oh Freedom, because it contains a
significant flaw that ends up being self-destructive: readers can only take
so much shock before they start to develop a resistance to it, their
tolerance levels increasing. And so to hold their attention you in turn
must increase the shock in your pieces, leading to an even higher
tolerance, and so on, the cycle repeating, until you are completely out of
touch with reality, and making such wild claims as that the President
actually is snorting cocaine every time he brings up his mouchoir to wipe
away his sweat, when he is in public (an actual accusation published on
your site, without even a hint of irony). Well when you have reached that
stage you really only have two options. One is to stubbornly continue down
the same path, slobbering and blabbering, as people become more educated
and informed and seek other sources, gradually sliding into obscurity, no
one taking you seriously anymore, a crazy voice on the fringe of Gambian
politics, refered to only with pity, and a wry shake of the head. And the
other option, the harder but more worthwhile option, is to change.

One thing I realized while reading you the past few weeks is that what lies
at the center of your failure, Oh Freedom, is the ego of your editor. In a
way Mr M'bai exhibits the exact same quality he claims to see in the
President: self-centred-ness, and an outsized ego that throws a huge shadow
over everything he does. Not a week goes by without a news article,
headlined with great glee and many exclamation points, announcing the
latest threats to Mr M'bai's health and life. (Each of these articles is
decorated with a picture of the threat maker, one of the President, and one
of Mr M'bai smugly smiling in a white shirt). One gets the impression of Mr
M'bai - from the way he controls the narrative of the site - that he is
just clever enough to know how to provoke his subjects ((and delight in
this provocation)), but not quite clever enough to see the corrosive effect
his actions have on the body politic of our country. He writes with great
gusto about the misfortunes of others, painstakingly recounting the most
sordid parts of their histories, mixing truths and half-truths. Mr M'bai is
the one who complains the loudest about censorship in Gambia, yet on the
radio show itself his voice and his theories reign supreme -any callers who
do not toe the Freedom line are immediately disconnected, without even
being given a chance to explain themselves (this happened more than once
when I listened to the radio program). And then, to add to that, he ignores
the rigorous standards that true journalists hold themselves to, blurring
the line between what is truth and what exists only in his imagination.
Most reports are presented as first-hand accounts from people close to the
situations he describes. Invented characters float up again and again, with
only the barest attempts to make them sound real (to believe him all of
state house and half the army are running to give him the latest gossip at
court).

Thing is, despite all this, I have dreamt of a better Freedom: a newspaper
existing beyond the censor of the State, out there in cyberspace, free as a
bird, able to do things that a paper on the ground would never even dream
of. A paper that uses this unparalleled opportunity to build something
wonderful, something built on integrity and respect and honesty, something
that all Gambians can be proud of and turn to. You speak excitedly every
week about the latest "plan" you have uncovered which will topple the
Government. But you have never presented us with what will replace what we
have - are we only to burn down the house we live in, possessing no plans
to build one in its place, or find further habitation? If you only looked
closer you would see: toppling our government by whatever means necessary
is not necessarily the one (or the only) solution to our problems. The
problems we face have a root cause that is much deeper: it is the
structures we have in place that are flawed - the system that we have
created skewing the balance of power, lacking checks and balances, still
operating largely in ways our previous monarchies operated, with the leader
in charge (whoever it may happen to be at the time) possessing final and
absolute power, with no way to mitigate against the excesses created by
this power. It will take time and many failures and restarts to correct
this (as it has done in other nations, all throughout history), and a new
government (especially at the violent costs you propose) is not necessarily
the right (or the only) way to achieve this goal. Instead we must recognize
the system we have for what it is, and work together to address its
problems irrespective of what government is in power. Only thus, and
gradually, over many generations, will we achieve the kind of government
that we desire: one that will have no option but to respect the rights of
its citizens, and create a safe and nurturing environment in which all
Gambians may grow to their full potential.

Deep down, of course, I am filled with a sense of pessimism. I cannot see
you changing, no matter how hard I try to imagine it - I'm afraid tomorrow
I'll load up your site, and it'll be more of the same. Well in that case I
see only one option: it is time to boycott Freedom. It is time to say: yes,
we are Gambian citizens and we may disagree with the government sometimes,
but Freedom does not represent us, cannot represent us given the way it has
chosen. Only then can we begin to have a useful dialog as a nation and as a
people. Thankfully you are not the only option we have. There are far more
reputable sources online - e.g. the standard at standard.gm, and the Point
at thepoint.gm - sources which, if not perfect, at least try to be
professional in their journalistic work given the constraints they operate
under, keeping tabs on the government as much as practicable, and thereby
contributing more to achieving true freedom than you ever could, Oh Freedom.

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