By Staff Reporter<\/p>\n
Veteran politician Vernon Mwaanga says the Patriotic Front government has been hostile to independent media since its ascendence to power in 2011.<\/p>\n
Congratulating The Mast newspapers on its first anniversary, Mwaanga said it has been a difficult and hazardous journey for the newspaper due to shrinking space available to independent media in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a difficult and hazardous journey, because of the limited and shrinking \u00a0space available to the independent media since President Edgar Lungu came into power in 2015. It is an open secret that the PF as a party and government has been hostile to the independent media since \u00a0it ascended to office in 2011,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mwaanga said it was both shocking and unbelievable the manner in which they dealt with The Post Newspaper , which aggressively supported their campaign for power in 2011.<\/p>\n
The former information minister in the MMD government said,\u00a0 \u201cadmittedly , they used the Zambia Revenue Authority(ZRA) as a hit squad to get rid of The Post Newspaper . All the Newspapers and particularly the state media, face tax issues with the ZRA and there are countless times in the past , when the Zambian taxpayers have had to subsidise the public media.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mwaanga has accused government controlled newspapers and Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation of having been working as PF mouthpieces in the recent past without consideration for taxpayers who support them through subsidies and forced levies, with different political and social formations and views.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll these divergent views have a right to be heard on these platforms, but alas, these media houses deny those with dissenting or opposing views , the right to be heard. The concept of state owned media has been with us since the 60s , but never has the ugly face of state control been more pronounced than now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He recalls \u2018an exciting era\u2019 of public media editors such as Dustan Kamanas, Vincent Mijonis, John Musukumas, the William Saidis , Kelvin Mulenga, himself as Editor-in-Chief as some point and others who ran the newspapers independently when citizens looked forward to reading newspapers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had indepth, well written articles like Kapelwa Musonda and Lusaka After Dark. Some of these articles attacked corrupt Ministers, Government and Parastatal officials in a very subtle way and yet the government of the day , never made any attempt to muzzle the media they owned even during the one party system,\u201d recalls Mwaanga.<\/p>\n
He said it was shameful that today it was a crime for opposition leaders to be reported in the public media, whose taxes and those of their members and supporters pay their salaries and their perks .<\/p>\n
Mwaanga believes that something has gone seriously wrong in so far as understanding \u00a0the concept of ownership and the difference between ownership and control saying the only time when people with opposing views are reported, is when there is something negative to say, be it distorted or not.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe independent media is facing serious survival issues as evidenced by the number of times they have run foul of the \u00a0government regulatory agencies. You just have to ask the owners of Muvi TV, Prime TV, Komboni Radio, Radio Phoenix and some community radio stations around the country, who have had to walk a tight rope, just to keep going,\u201d he said .<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Mast is not operating in a normal manner as can be seen by the very limited pages it carries \u00a0with very few adverts , meaning that it only survives through newspaper sales. Not so long ago, the youngmen who sale newspapers on our streets were being harassed for selling The Mast and copies of the newspaper unfairly confiscated.\u201d<\/p>\n
He called for clear separation of power and responsibilities among the three arms of government – the legislature, executive and the judiciary while the media should be allowed to play the role of the fourth estate without undue pressure and interference from politicians.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe press is called the fourth estate and has the duty of ensuring that all these three arms are kept in check and that each is allowed to perform its constitutional duties.\u00a0 No arm has a right to impose itself on the other,\u201d Mwaanga said .<\/p>\n
He said on its part, the press must continue to have its own ethics and professional bodies to ensure that journalists act in a doubly fair and professional manner with a high bar of integrity, so that citizens can look to them for protection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Staff Reporter Veteran politician Vernon Mwaanga says the Patriotic Front government has been hostile to independent media since its ascendence to power in 2011. Congratulating The Mast newspapers on its first anniversary, Mwaanga said it has been a difficult and hazardous journey for the newspaper due to shrinking space available to independent media in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":748,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions\/748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsdayzambia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}