Swaziland’s King Mswati III had the chance to turn the tables on journalists this week when he questioned them about the way they report the news.
The king was among a panel of several leaders from Southeast Asia and Africa taking part in the Langkawi International Dialogue, an anti-poverty conference, in Malaysia.
They were given the chance to question a group of media practitioners, which included Swaziland television journalist Sandile Mkhanya, about what the media are doing to make things happen and whether the media are ‘part of the problem in national development’.
The king had wanted to know what it takes for the media to ensure that important issues get published or aired by them. Frivolous issues divert journalists from the task of educating readers, said the king. ‘We have been talking about poverty eradication, but when you actually see tomorrow's newspapers, they will not reflect some of the important issues we have been discussing.’
Responding to the question from King Mswati III, Mkhanya said it boils down to the responsibility of the journalist when processing each news story.
The king, who is the last absolute monarch in sub-Saharan Africa, was on a panel that included Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe who has been widely denounced for human rights abuses and economic mismanagement.
The irony of having a panel of leaders whose own democratic credentials are in question criticising the media was not lost on the Reuters news agency. It reported Mugabe saying, ‘The press and journalists are they driven by the sense of honesty and objectivity all the time? Or are they swayed from objectivity and truth by certain notions arising from their own subjective views?’
Mugabe added, ‘I say that in the light of reports quite often deliberately intended to tarnish and deceive. Should the journalists really indulge in what they know to be misleading stories, and therefore stories that go against objectivity and the truth?’
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, another leader whose relations with the media have been uneasy in the past, expressed worries over the quality of education most journalists received.
‘How can someone who is not educated themselves educate another person?’ he asked, pointing out that historical events did not happen at random and that journalists must stress the linkages of cause and effect in the events they covered.
Museveni's government maintained tight control of news during an election period early this year, prompted by a fight to hold onto power, and expelled a foreign correspondent, says Reporters Without Borders.
Bernama, the Malaysian national news agency, covering the same event, quoted Rehman Rashid, an associate editor of New Straits Times on the role of the media. ‘Our role is to describe the world, to be mirrors, amplifiers and in so doing we change the world (in the process).’
Likening the media to a shaft of light which does not change or move things but merely makes things more visible, Rehman said the media’s role in highlighting issues enables it to achieve its secondary role of ‘changing the world’.
The Malaysian Star’s Group Editor-in-Chief Michael Aeria said government leaders or others have to keep on engaging the media to ensure that important news see the light of day.
With ‘millions of readers, different types of journalists and not all of them sharing the same passion and ideals’ of their newspaper editors or owners, he said that many a time the media needs help from leaders and the public in understanding the type of news that readers want to read and that they consider to be important.
‘A lot of times I think we are ignorant as to what you consider to be important,’ he said. ‘If you can show that we are wrong, we want your side of the story.’
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