Police spies have infiltrated journalism newsrooms in Swaziland,
the kingdom’s premier media watchdog has reported.
This has led to a heightened climate of fear, the Media
Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), Swaziland chapter said.
MISA said, ‘Newsrooms in the print media are no longer a safe
haven for journalists following their infiltration by spies.’
In its annual report on media freedom in Swaziland called So This is Democracy? MISA said, ‘In
August 2012, police interrogated one of the reporters at one of the media houses
after common and casual newsroom talk with colleagues.
‘According to a complaint lodged by the Swaziland Diaspora
Platform (SDP) with the MISA Swaziland chapter, a journalist who was spying
reported him to the police and on others in the newsroom.
‘Journalists have begun to tread cautiously and carefully in
the wake of police informants in the media houses. This heightened climate of
fear perpetuates the already endemic self-censorship, which in turn bodes
further ill for media freedom.
There are only two main newspaper groups in Swaziland. MISA
called one group, the Swazi Observer,
‘a pure propaganda machine for the royal family’.
MISA said the other group, the Times of Swaziland, had ‘allowed commercial interests to take
precedence over editorial independence’.
Freedom House, the global democracy watchdog, categorised Swaziland
as ‘not free’ in a report issued earlier this year. King Mswati III, rules the
kingdom as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.
See also
PRESS FREEDOM AND THE NATION
NO PRESS FREEDOM AT ‘OBSERVER’
No comments:
Post a Comment