African Media News

Friday 30 April 2010

East Afria: The media has given the EA Common Market a raw deal! [opinion]

 

There is something definitely not right the way the media is treating such an important breakthrough as the formation of the East African Common Market.[more]

Friday 30 April 2010

Uganda: UN official criticises proposed media Bill

 

A top United Nations official has criticised the proposed media Bill, saying it will suppress media freedom.[more]

Friday 30 April 2010

South Africa: The mass media without the masses [opinion]

 

Monday, 3 May 2010, marks the annual commemoration of World Press Freedom Day - a day when all global citizens should remember, celebrate and protect the crucial role that free media plays within democracy and development.[more]

Thursday 29 April 2010

Uganda: President Museveni blames CBS closure on ministers

 

The battle over the fate of the Central Broadcasting Services has taken a new twist with President Museveni reportedly blaming some of his hardliner ministers for keeping the radio off-air.[more]

Thursday 29 April 2010

Uganda: The More You Scare People the Less They Fear You [opinion]

 

A group of CBS radio employees last week met President Museveni at State House Entebbe to beg for the reopening of the station that was closed more than six months ago. Once a proud and powerful media institution, and one that could defeat government programmes like the Land Bill, CBS has been reduced to begging for survival. The dogged defiance seen in the early days of the closure has given away to desperation.[more]

Thursday 29 April 2010

Zambia: Media players shelve ZAMEC launch

 

The Media Liaison Committee (MLC) has suspended the launch of the Zambia Media Council (ZAMEC) from May 3, 2010 to a date to be announced after the World Press Freedom Day commemorations.[more]

Thursday 29 April 2010

Resist the temptation to censor the internet [opinion]

 

Writing crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach and your sides,” a monk wrote in the margins of a manuscript he was copying in a medieval monastery. Printing had much more evil potential. It was attacked on aesthetic grounds. Shortly after Gutenberg’s 15th-century invention of movable type, a great copyist, Vaspasiano, said “a gentleman would never foul his library with a roughly inked, manufactured book on coarse rag paper”. More seriously, those who had controlled the flow of information — notably the church — feared losing their hold on people’s minds and beliefs.

[more]

Thursday 29 April 2010

Kenya: Kenyan Muslims ban DStv

 

South African pay TV channel DStv has been banned in Kenya’s Mandera Town in North Eastern Province by the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, reports Dennis Itumbi for urnalism.co.za. Also outlawed are video shops, blamed for eroding moral values among the youth and causing poor academic performance.[more]

Wednesday 28 April 2010

Zambia: Formally table your complaints, Government urges MISA

 

The Government has implored the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) regional body to formally table its complaints regarding media law formulation to Government instead of issuing negative statement.[more]

Wednesday 28 April 2010

Somalia: EAJA Welcomes EU Position on Repression of Media

 

The Eastern Africa Journalists Association (EAJA) has praised the European Union and its member states for "for the first time," coming out strongly to condemn the continued violations of media freedom and freedom of information in Somalia.[more]