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Site Admin
Joined: 28 Mar 2006
Posts: 40
Location: Heart and Mind
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Notes on a Free and Responsible Press in Ethiopia
Donald N. Levine (aka Liben Gebre Etyopiya)
An article in the Amharic Reporter of March 5 described a meeting in my Chicago home a few days earlier. The article publicized my recent initiative to help different groups of the Ethiopian community enter into ongoing dialogues wherein differing perspectives could be aired and respectfully considered.
Although coverage of my meeting in the Reporter was gracious and gratifying, the article was flawed. It included sentences in quotation marks, whereas no one from the newspaper had actually interviewed me. The words reported were not the words that I spoke; the effect of the story was one-sided. That is to say, principles of professional journalism–respect for sources, factual accuracy, balanced reporting–were treated loosely.
In particular, my views about the unauthorized disclosure of election projections by EU staff members were misrepresented, as was the omission of my critique of baseless attacks against the EU mission in the Ethiopian Herald. Although I suggested that the early disclosures contributed to the evolving crisis, I certainly did not blame them or related hearsay statements for the current crisis which, I have argued consistently, has depended on a wide array of factors.
These include the deep-rooted culture of distrust, suspiciousness, and secrecy shared by all parties. More particularly, the ruling party erred on a number of counts–declaring martial law the night of the elections, sending security troops into the AAU dormitories in early June, alluding to Interhamwe in pre- and post-election discourse, killing numbers of innocent civilians, and unleashing security agents to harass opposition leaders and confiscate offices. The opposition erred by vocally scorning anything that the ruling party had done to ensure acceptance of election results–so the sweep of Addis Ababa came as a total shock–and by making a decision not to participate as elected representatives in the Parliament, whatever their reservations, and in full knowledge of potential trouble to themselves and the country.
It is harder than one might think to entertain mixed assessments of anyone in today's political climate. During the past couple months, time and again some little morsel of my remarks has been torn out of context and severely distorted. That is exactly what has been going on in Ethiopia and in the Diaspora for many months now. Within seconds, pressures to polarize have turned people into pro- or anti-this or that. Suspicion rules–as it has in Ethiopia for most of the past half century.
Although errors of this sort are common enough in Ethiopia's media, the solution is not to restrict freedom; the solution is to produce better freedom. Under Emperor Haile Selassie and under the Derg, there were no independent public media. The EPRDF regime opened the gates to a broad diversity of publications, but in the absence of adequate training and institutionalization of journalistic standards, publishers often failed to meet the minimal standards of professional journalism. The result was a plethora of publications that often paid no attention to confirming sources, checking accuracy of facts, and offering balanced reportage. Indeed, in some cases newspapers functioned just like the organ of a political party, not as media designed to inform and enlighten public opinion. At the same time, in its fear of political criticism, the government clamped down harshly on the private press, year after year, failing to guarantee space for dissent while helping it find ways to become more responsible and professional.
Until 2004, that is. In every year since 1991 an international association of journalists, Reporters Without Borders, included PM Meles Zenawi among the list of national leaders whom they identified as enemies of the free press. In 2004, for the first time, the Prime Minister's name was removed from that list. In that year, preparations for open political debates in public forums were solidly laid. In that year Parliament began to consider legislation to provide rules by which a free press could operate in a country lacking institutional safeguards against abuses, even though the Ministry of Information continued to express more fear than encouragement.
In 2005, the Prime Minister's name was returned to the RWB list of enemies of a free press.
I hope it will not be there for long. I hope that the Government will return to a less repressive policy by releasing journalists from prison and lifting the ever-present threat of imprisonment.
Parliament is about to return to the task of devising legislation that may promote the standards of a responsible press and guarantee the protection of a free press at the same time. In the course of open discussions about that legislation, the strengthening of a civil public in Ethiopia stands to be
advanced considerably.
Bertu le-hulum!! |
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