The United Nations General Assembly decided to observe September 15 as the international Day of Democracy and invited all member states and organisations to commemorate this important day. This year’s theme, Engaging Young People on Democracy, highlights the challenges and opportunities of young people engaging in democratic processes. As the great Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi once observed, “the spirit of democracy requires change of heart …requires the inculcation of the spirit of brotherhood”. The preamble of the United Nations resolution affirmed that while democracies share common features, there is no single model of democracy and that democracy does not belong to any country or region. I am sure even the Greeks who are the first to test democracy would not have the temerity to claim that they have a model of democracy for all humanity to copy from. I wanted to share with the readers the important role that the media can play in building a democracy. There are serious misconceptions about the media’s role in a democracy, and in particular the print media, whose days seem numbered given the upsurge of the electronic and social media. But that is a topic for another day! The media no doubt has an important role in shaping the public’s perception of politicians and politics. It is a profoundly important aspect of democracy that there should be a free press. Many Rwandans have lived through autocracies and have observed the obscenities that can arise in a dictatorship as soon as there is no free press. In a sense, the press is an industry like any other, for the simple reason that only a profitable enterprise can be genuinely editorially independent, or, if it is not profitable itself, it has to be subsidized by some other organizations. In another sense, the press is an industry like no other industry, because it provides an essential role in political democracies by providing a running commentary on, and criticism of, concentrations of power in society, and the Government is the most important of these. This ensures that relations between the press and the politicians in democracies are always likely to be tense, if not frosty and sometimes threatening. It would indeed be surprising if the relations were always cordial. Sometime in 1890, Paul Mall Gazette, a Briton, wrote: “to suppose that in any country the influence of the Press was ever a delight to the Government would be a complete mistake.It is a rival influence, often a conflicting influence, sometimes, as it has proved in our country on various occasions, a commanding or destroying influence. Its natural basis is no respecter of persons. Its business is criticism. Its natural sphere of operation lies between Government and the people, with bearing upon both, and a particular solitude to please and benefit the latter, that is the people. The press is sometimes a nuisance to ministers, because it preaches triumphantly from imperfect information. At other times, because it discovers too much of the truth and makes inconvenient exposures of neglect, error, fraudulent pretence and false principle. How then should it be loved by those who suffer from the operation? It is important that politicians remember this. So politicians should know that they are not meant to be loved in the media! Sir Winston Churchill, that great British politician of the twentieth century, once defined the role of politicians as telling people what was going to happen next week, next month and next year, and then explaining afterwards why it didn’t. That gives them something in common with most journalists. The press and the journalists do set the agenda for many matters that become issues of public debate and democratic dispensation. The repeated success of investigative journalism in exposing wrongdoing, whether by individuals, corporations, Governments, is an essential element in the whole process of making a democracy function properly. Reports by the media in Rwanda and elsewhere in the East African region on allegations against some individuals in government and the public sector have continued unabated. Despite the mass media’s high appetite for sleaze, sensationalism and superficiality, the notion of the media as watchdog, as guardian of the public interest and indeed as a conduit between governors and the governed remains deeply ingrained. Finally, there is need for the media, given the vital role it plays in a democracy, to ensure that it is balanced, objective and thorough in what they do. In this way, they will be able to earn the respect of not only the people whom they represent, but also the politicians with whom they have a healthy tension. The writer is a consultant and visiting lecturer at the RDF Senior Command and Staff College, Nyakinama. oscar_kim2000@yahoo.co.uk
