Proposed EAC Media Council should look beyond press freedoms

Media managers and practitioners are set to meet on the sidelines of the EAC Heads of State Summit in Kampala, Uganda, next week, to discuss and endorse the setting up of a regional media council and an advisory body.This is a great initiative considering the state of the media in the region vis-à-vis its role. For long overlooked and only used when needed, media personalities have decided that sitting back and expecting governments to glance in their way will not do; they can mold it on their own.High on the agenda, according to comments from parties at the forefront of the cause, is the ideals of the media being accorded its due involvement in the regional integration process. Benign. But not exhaustive.The EAC Media Council, once set up, should more than just advocate for free movement of labour in the media market, rights of journalists and press freedom, as well as championing integration process. What media practitioners most desire today is economic empowerment.It is deeply ironical that many a journalist will go to cover activities of cooperatives in the countryside while they return to the office to yawn. Many journalists survive on hand-to-mouth basis; the daring unscrupulous ones resort to brown envelopes.Yet, amid all this, the usual fallback position that adequate facilitation by employers and ‘good’ pay will help cut the “yoke of journalism” always seem far-fetched.A combination of these issues has seriously compromised editorial independence, and objectivity and balance among media practitioners. Journalists will remain susceptible to the manipulation of functionaries and other parties as long as this weak spot is not fixed.The parties spearheading the setting up of the media council must place economic empowerment of individual media practitioners at the top of the agenda. It’s high time we ended talks that journalism is a broke profession by making it a vocation that empowers its vanguards into economic sustenance.

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Proposed EAC Media Council should look beyond press freedoms