(Alula Solomon)
I have always had difficulties with Ethiopian journalists who self-appoint themselves as the emancipators/liberators of the society. I frequently have a brush with an incredible arrogance of assuming that without their involvement, that the country would be full of chaos. That irritates mainly, not because they have no contribution to it, but because they often are slaves themselves of a specific group, religion, party and foreign interests. Many of them are traditionally trained to be ideological militants and radicals against the system before they read or learn about the realities and causes that brought about the current system.
At other times, I feel they don’t take themselves seriously, but perhaps they have set a goal early in their professional life to use the opportunity as a means to achieve living abroad as a prosecuted person. This is why, I would agree with Kebede Kassa’s recent mocking of other ‘journalists’. He said some journalists feel extremely angered that despite their seniority, the new generation of journalists have leap forged them to build a case that makes them eligible for a visa. Most importantly, many of them disappear into their life and studies once they have crossed the border and ensured having opportunity to live in the western countries. Look at the Ginbot- sponsored ESAT or Oromo Media Network (OMN); they are professionally mediocre and of low quality skills despite the talk of exodus of journalists every day.
And, how many of those who have made it to the West broke into the global professional media? None!
So, I have the idea that it is not journalism that is prosecuted in Ethiopia. It is lawlessness.
It is the ugliest form of extreme militant ideology of inciting violence. It is a journalism which acts as morally irresponsible. It is the idea of creating anarchy with in fairly and relatively new tradition of exercising freedom of speech in Ethiopia. It is an opportunist move of using the legal and scientific illiteracy of the population for one’s personal advantage. Many of them have undue power to insult and blackmail anyone at will. They can easily and without any kind of professional self-censorship write their imagination or made up stories of an individual or a body corporate. Freedom of speech is not an absolute right. It has limits. The limit is to protect the name, physical and psychological well-being of another citizen. Any member of the society is as equal citizen as I am and as the journalist is.
Censorship is not allowed partly because liberals thought that man is capable of knowing what is good or bad for society. And again society can and should be able to judge. In a society where you have a huge stock of illiterate population (61%) and oriented towards oral tradition, this is a self-strangling mechanism. Take the recent disturbances in Oromiya Universities. How many of the protesting University students have information about the Master plan? What is it about? It is mainly despised for something that they imagined and felt than what is written or depicted in the plan.
I feel this is a learning process for all of us as well. Because it is built on something that is not concrete (well understood fact), the students couldn’t define the scope of the demands. They surpassed their right. There is a proverb related to it. ‘My right to extend my arms ends at your nose’. It became disillusioned and suddenly changed hand and started to become a violence damaging properties and as we are aware now, life of innocent people from other ethnic group as well.
Journalists are as creative as novelists in Ethiopia. Their creativeness cannot obscure their illegal and immoral acts. Besides, their motive is damaging anything against their view. This power needs to submit to the rule of law. This power is unfair and needs to be tamed. When they go to the western world, they will know responsibility. And therefore, they haven’t published a single story in a renowned online or offline magazine, newspaper etc. But journalism has its own intrinsic weaknesses as well. This of course is for all journalists in the world. So, it doesn’t help to delve into it. Instead, we should move to what journalism is about or not.
Journalism is about telling the truth. Its loyalty is to the citizenry. Its essence is discipline of verification. It needs the independence of the practitioner from what it covers. It is not about aspiring for power but serves as an independent monitor of power. It doesn’t breed sectarianism rather provides forum/platform for debate. It doesn’t use blackmailing, character assassination, hate speech, insults but proper language and criticism. Its criticism is not about faults only but also about merits in an intelligible way. It strives to make news significant, interesting and relevant but doesn’t use it to unfairly generalize. Journalism keeps news comprehensive and proportional but not one sided. Trust and credibility are its foundations. Integrity is its cornerstone to shakeout the conventional.
Now, Ethiopian Journalists fall short of what is expected of them in the above paragraph. They are by far mediocre in comparison with their African counterparts. A study conducted by Terje S. Skjerdal in 2004 claims that Journalism training programs across the African continent have different attitudes to the issue of universal vs. local values in journalism. Of course, the study points out that journalism as per western values could be at odd with what is expected in Africa. And I advocate for journalism to be contextualized in each countries level of development and the experience of freedom of expression. People like Mohammed Adow and Yvonne Ndege should have been very good examples to emulate than Eskindir Nega and the likes who preach absolute anarchy and justify holocaust.
The dysfunctionality doesn’t end there. Organizations such as CPJ, PEN, and Article 19 try to train mercenary and gorilla journalists who not trained as journalists in the first place. They surpass their organizational mandate to train and send ‘journalists and activists’ for purely political agenda. The mission of these people is written in either London, New York or other Western Capitals. Why the Ethiopian people or any other self-honoring people would accept such mercenaries? Why political and ideological agenda’s and interests would be pushed to our society without the consent of the people.
In essence, it is an arrogance of highest order to tell another country and people as sovereign as we are that its own people are not capable of promoting democracy or cannot choose what road it should take and so on. Who are they to train cadets politicians and activists to participate in coup d’état as happened in many Latin American countries? How do they define democracy anyway in connection with this infamous act? A government of journalists by journalists for journalists? Or a government of activists, by the activists for the activists? It is self-defeating strategy and it has been witnessed time and again with so many organizations, mercenaries and fighters around the world.
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