Museveni or President? Editors should give credit where it is due

Reading through newspapers, one will often encounter headlines such as “Musisi builds 100km city roads” or “Museveni to build two new schools per district”. Jennifer Musisi is the immediate former executive director of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) while Yoweri Museveni is the President of Uganda.

The key thing about the two headlines, and certainly many others of that nature, is the seeming tendency to merge the individuals and the public offices they represent; or what some have described – rightly or wrongly – as the personalisation of public office. This is a matter Moses Odokonyero thinks Uganda’s media overplays and needs to step back from and instead demonstrate that these programmes are linked to public purse, not private pockets of the individual office holders.
Odokonyero highlighted the recent article headlined “Saleh’s Shs600b plan for Rwenzori” in the Saturday Monitor of January 12.

“…while the story was strong in offering background/context as to why Gen Saleh is camped in Fort Portal and the Rwenzori region, it was not strong in probing the public policy basis and correctness of channelling Shs600b through Gen Saleh. It had no voice from the Ministry of Finance (on the Shs600b figure). No comment from an independent public policy expert. Consequently, it read like a public relations piece with chunks of text in it sounding like they were paraphrased from a brochure about Saleh/Operation Wealth Creation.”
The NMG Editorial Policy provides guidance to editors on how to navigate around such stories and headlines in two sections as below:
The Group will practise issue-based as opposed to excessive or continuous personality-based journalism that tends to create an impression that the issues are driven by personal agenda and vendetta and in the process eschews journalism that is based on unattributable and unsubstantiated rumour and gossip in relation to public figures.
The other is: “Our media platforms will avoid such “non-news” content as empty statements of a general nature, occasions or releases where publicity for individuals, groups or organisations is the sole dominant objective.”

In the above case, the editors may have been quandary considering that indeed the Rwenzori project seems to be anchored on Gen Saleh as an individual and on his controversial Operation Wealth Creation. Yet like Odokonyero suggests, additional probing of where the money will come from, how this fits in the wider local government budgeting framework and whether this is the right way to do things should have been given attention in the story.

As a general rule, however, good journalism requires that individuals are separated from their offices except where the story is personal. For example, with regard to the roads in Kampala, the headline should be “KCCA builds 100km city roads” and when the executive director is launching the construction, then it should be “Musisi flags off 100km city roads project”. The same applies to the President when he acts in his official capacity or individual capacity. In this way, the readers will be spared the constant throwing into their faces of names of leaders above the institutions they work for. But most importantly, it is the more accurate presentation.

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John Ssali had a few questions regarding what may or may not be published.
“I regularly peer review articles written by a cross-section of people for publication in the Daily Monitor. Some get published, others don’t. Of course, I am cognisant of the fact that not all can be published. I have noticed a trend that those dwelling on the positions or the trials/tribulations of a certain political party and its leaders never get printed, but those dealing with general issues of the day like taxation, boat tragedy, anniversaries, etc, get the nod.

My question is, are there brakes on publication of politically-oriented articles? Secondly, what is the word limit for a good article? Thirdly would it be beneficial if in future, consideration was given to provide all parties some space to publish their positions.
The answer is: “All editorial content [articles] will be selected for its inherent news value and not to appease, augment or respond to political, commercial or any other interests. Editors and journalists must test the value of each story, report or article by interrogating the extent to which it satisfies the “so what?” element.

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