Just how Ugandan Media is shrinking !

With the government liberalizing media in 1993, a lot of private media houses were set up. Today we have more than 100 FM stations in Uganda, 10 newspapers and 20 television stations.
However, while the media is growing in Uganda, serious journalism is not.
Many of the stars of FM are not hardnosed muckrakers who are serious professionals. Most are musicians, comedians, pastors, even witch doctors with a personality for radio. Many are content to let callers "vent" their emotions, then take a break every so often for a two-minute "news bulletin." Other mix news with comedy and you can feel the dilemma.
Many of these FM stations emphasize the entertainment role more than the information role. They play music throughout the day and only spare an average of 20-minutes a day for news. This is very dangerous to journalism.
As a result people have remained in the shadows of information. People get less information on AIDS, poverty eradication, hygiene, farming, and governance. Rural based FM stations are not engaged in any serious kind of journalism, they read announcements and are tools used by witch doctors to advance witchcraft and other false beliefs.
People ultimately decide how their press should act. Perhaps Ugandans are no longer terribly interested in knowing the "deeper issues." They definitely aren't listening by the time you mention that the unseasonable rains that have swept away the roads, really have to do with a hole in something called the ozone layer. It is a general malaise that seems to taken root in East Africa and spreads to Africa as a whole.
Democratically, Uganda’s radio stations and print media have had a reputation for independence since the government loosened its controls of the media in the early 1990s, but their news coverage is fair minded and the popularity of interactive talk-shows and live public debates known as “ebimeeza” is due in large part to their respect for the rules of journalistic balance and the need to air all political views.
As a result, the privately owned media have won the public’s respect and have defended themselves effectively.
However, government controlled media have kept their stance as a government mouthpiece, UBC TV and Radio have continued to be used as a tool by the government to deny opposition the opportunity to advance their information to the grassroots.
Last month Gawaya Tegulle a program host of ‘Tonight with Tegulle’ on UBC television was suspended for hosting Col.Dr.Kiiza Besigye leader of the main opposition party FDC.
It has been reported that some ministers and an official from the president’s office called top UBC management protesting Besigye’s presence on the air. This caused panic among the managers, and it was reported that they considered stopping the show. Fearing that this was going to cause embarrassment to the government and their profession, they instead settled for simply blocking live telephone calls from the audience.
Unlike Kenya, Uganda opposition leaders face big challenges in accessing public media channels or those owned by NRM supporters. One can recall another incident two month ago when Dr. Besigye was due to appear on a Kitgum-based Kitti FM and the generator was switched off reportedly on the orders of the RDC, who phoned the manager threatening to close the station indefinitely.
The basics of an independent, accountable public broadcaster have yet to be achieved in Uganda, and UBC’s future is falling short.. We should select an independent board that is committed to rescuing the editorial integrity of the UBC. It is unlikely that with the current management people will have faith in UBC as a public broadcaster. The government is now happy with UBC because it’s the type of broadcaster it wants to have.
UBC is widely known to be a snakepit, where people of integrity fall victim to vicious power politics and are squeezed out, leaving mediocrity to thrive. The current management has not reversed this culture or put their mark on the institution. As a result, it may well prove to be a victim of its own inefficiency.
As all this happens, international bodies who measure press freedom are judging us. Their opinion is that freedom of expression in Uganda is shrinking. According to the 2006 Global Press Report by Reporters Without Borders, Tanzania is the region's best-rated country for press freedom. It is in 88th position. Uganda dropped from 80th to 116th on the index. Kenya is in the 118th among the 168 countries evaluated.
By this measure, Uganda is the most troubling case because of its steep decline to the lowest position it has occupied since the Index was launched five years ago.
Journalists should worry about their future, especially in Uganda, where anyone, even the, unprofessional, can go an a radio or television and do whatever comedy they want.

If we are to take the practice of journalism as a profession, then journalists must demonstrate that it is special, that it offers something of real value, and can prove its value to the public.
In Uganda, there is a need now, more than ever, among journalists to identifying sense amid the nonsense, sifting the important from the trivial, and, yes, for telling the truth.
These goals constitute the best mandate for a free press in a democracy and these goals are lacking among Ugandan journalists. Red Pepper is attacked for publishing all the sorts of lies; it continues to contaminate minds with trash every day. It’s such things that erode our values as journalists and keeps our profession questionable in the court of public opinion.
Today Africans live in more" democratic conditions" than ever before. This, again, might not mean much beyond the fact that we vote in elections but governments, in the end, may still steal. But at least more of us are voting, and have a wider choice of candidates to pick from.
The shabby state of press freedom is, therefore, a symptom of the democratic dead end Uganda seems to have hit. It's also a sign of how much the Ugandan media itself might have squandered its credibility as it struggled to find a new role after the heady 1990s and the falling away of many old-style dictatorships.
Talking about freedom of expression and press freedom as the foundations for a strong democracy is important, but it is also the task of responsible media figures to use this freedom to improve the everyday welfare of citizens.
Objectives such as the Millennium Development Goals, which include halving the number of people in the world living in extreme poverty and suffering from hunger, will remain routine, perhaps even forgotten, if the press fails to make them an issue.