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Rwanda: Less Than Half of Newspapers Respect Regularity - Report
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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
15 July 2008
Posted to the web 15 July 2008
Kigali
From about 37 local newspapers published last year, just 43 percent managed to reach the streets more often as per their periodicity, according to the annual study by the government media regulatory body.
The High Press Council says 54% of them were 'regularly irregular'. The irregularity primarily can be attributed to financial constraints, poor planning and weak managerial capacities on the part of the media owners, as it explains in its 2007 state of the media report.
Among the 57 newspapers registered by the Ministry of Information last year, only 37 managed to run at least a single issue in that year. The print media in Rwanda has only one daily newspaper, two Bi -weeklies, 8 weeklies, 20 bi-monthlies and a couple of monthly newspapers.
Although not so frequent, the Council says cases of news stories with misleading headlines have been noticed especially in print Kinyarwanda media.
In such cases, authors sensationalized their stories by phrasing titles perhaps to attract more readers. Others, as the HCP notes, did so perhaps to serve political and or personal ends or "pulling their opponents down!" as reported in the 2006 similar report.
"Some of such stories actually were capable of misleading readers instead thus leading to awkward interpretations. Moreover, most of such headlines did not entirely reflect the content of the story. Sometimes the content is different from what the title implies. The following table indicates some cases selected by the Council's monitoring team."
For example, according to the HCP, the government owned 'Imvaho Nshya' at some point ran a story with a headline that "qualifies one Augustin Ngirabatware as a "genocidaire" while he is still a suspect; thus violating article 22 of the media professional code of conduct".
As for privately owned 'Rushyashya': "From the introduction part of the story up to the end, the author does not relate title to content. It leaves the reader in some kind of dilemma such that s/he can interpret it out of context."
Some of the irregular newspapers as 'Umuseke', 'Le Réveil' and the Weekly Post managed to run at least one issue within the entire year 2007. The latter, however, was suspended by the Ministry of Information and its currently pursuing a case in the courts of law against the government.
Audiovisual media consists of 17 radio stations and only one television station. Only one radio station (Isango Stars) and one television station (Light House Ltd) were authorized by the High Council of the press to start broadcasting in Rwanda. The owners were cleared to apply for frequencies at the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA) as the law requires. This increases the number of audiovisual media authorized to operate in the country but which are yet to commence to nine (9) radios and one (1) TV.
The report also documents a "serious case of ethnic discrimination committed by Umurabyo newspaper". She was charged in court and pleaded guilty to all counts including defamation and was sentenced to one year prison term. She was released in January 2008 and has since resumed her work.
"Such kind of irresponsible reporting under the guise of journalism must stop if the media is to remain relevant in our society and change the perception caused by its dirty past", the HCP says.
The government funded body says most pressing challenge for it and media professionals is how to draw the line between incidents that befall journalists on the line of duty and those that occur to them as ordinary members of the society prone to encounter challenges resulting from the forces of nature.
"When a journalist for instance is beaten in a bar at awe hours of the night, attacked by robbers trying to steal his/her own property or attacked by personal enemies created not necessarily by his journalistic practices, etc.would it be appropriate to draw the conclusion that there is violation of press freedom?", the report ponders.
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There have been reports that some of the journalists that are reportedly beaten here usually have personal grudges with individuals over women and debts.
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