I must start with an obvious disclaimer. The arguments I make here, as with all opinion writings, are entirely my views, expressed in the exercise of the inalienable right to free speech, a core provision in Uganda’s Bill of Rights.
I have written this ‘Majority Report’ column for eight years, uncensored. It is an honour. My editors have never dictated what I should and shouldn’t write about. No topic is proscribed. This has been the track record of Daily Monitor, called The Monitor in its first 10 years until 2002 – a platform for independent thought and a space for bold journalism.
No other media outlet in contemporary Uganda has sustained this standing so consistently and this long.
Yet, for a whole month until early this week, this newspaper and all its sister outlets under the Nation Media Group, Uganda (NMG-U) were summarily shut down by Ugandan authorities.
I cannot speak to the circumstances of such an extreme measure, and I know nothing about the conditions and compromises that led to reopening. But as a writer I am delighted I can write this column again.
As a citizen I am deeply relieved that our country’s most influential media company has returned to business despite the damage and losses incurred, and a newspaper many trust for independent and informative content is back on the stands and online.
The Monitor brand occupies an unmatched place in Uganda’s civic and political sphere; it is irreplaceable. Shutting it down for a month, the third time and the longest this has happened, leaves a chilling impact on media freedom. It also puts a stain on Uganda’s investment and tourism image.
Daily Monitor has held the line of critical reporting and public-interest journalism in ways no other media outlet has, earning public trust and earnest respect hard to quantify or monetise.
Consider, for example, that during the shutdown, Uganda Radio Network published a report of a survey with some instructive results. While not totally representative, across the country the survey found that newspaper circulation of other papers had plummeted because of the absence of Daily Monitor on the stands.
This was quite revealing. Equally intriguing but perhaps unsurprising, readers interviewed expressed sentiments of withdrawal from mainstream news consumption altogether and a shift to social media now that they couldn’t access Daily Monitor.
Stark irony
This is a stark irony.
Strangling a credible and established media house, one that operates with important institutional guardrails and editorial gatekeeping, necessarily creates a void that is easily exploitable for unprofessional and potentially dangerous information dissemination.
This is now utterly hard to regulate or stop in the era of unfettered social media, clickbaits, algorithms and individuals who selfishly pursue personal attention out of which they make money.
Whatever grievances Uganda’s leadership may have against NMG-U, constructive dialogue is a more prudent strategy.
There is a popular but false perception that Daily Monitor is anti-government. Far from it. Except for doing what any serious and independent media house is expected to do, that is, report critically and independently, Daily Monitor (and before it, The Monitor) has for more than three decades been one of the NRM’s most important strategic allies.
Mr Philip Wafula Oguttu, The Monitor’s founding editor-in-chief, was in fact a card-carrying member of President Museveni’s Uganda People’s Movement, the predecessor to the NRM and knew Mr Museveni very personally.
The Monitor consistently provided intellectual and political support to the government’s embrace of neoliberal economic policies that were implemented throughout the 1990s when it could have done the exact opposite had it been, indeed, ‘anti-government’.
Better still, at a time when the NRM faced global scrutiny over its democratic credentials having banned political party activities, The Monitor newspaper provided priceless political legitimacy as the foremost point of reference in making the case that Uganda was a free and democratic country.
This, of course, was always only part of the story, but in the quest for a democratic society there is no gainsaying the value of having a media house that runs on an independent editorial posture and provides space for ideas and arguments very critical of the ruling government as Daily Monitor has done for decades.
Whatever lies ahead in the post-shutdown era, whether the paper’s fidelity to its editorial values takes a knock, the Monitor brand, name and edge shall endure.