CJA E-letter www.cjaweb.org

Issue No 3 February 2004

Page 2 Pakistani reporter held secretly for a month/ The Hindu hits back

Page 3 Farewell and thank you, Ian and Edna

Page 4-5 Chill wind in Zimbabwe, by Sandra Nyaira

Page 6 The Daily News publishes again

Page 7 Zambian ministers didn’t see the joke

Page 8 Book review: All the wisdom on journalism

Page 9 Book review: Sing your way to the radio station

Killed by Maoists’ bomb in Bangladesh

Manik Shaha, who had written about Maoist and criminal groups, had his head blown off by a home-made bomb at Khulna in south-west Bangladesh in January. His assailants threw the bomb after stopping the rickshaw in which he was returning home. In protest, Khulna workers went out on a two-day general strike.

Gaffar Tushar, leader of a Maoist group The People’s War, wrote to Khulna press club claiming responsibility. The group has threatened nine other journalists, who work at Satkhira, near Khulna. Shaha is the eighth journalist to have been killed in the area in seven years. He worked for the daily New Age and as a stringer for the BBC. He had received death threats by phone.

Magazine editor Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury was arrested in Dhaka in November when about to leave to give a speech to a symposium in Israel. On the basis of the speech, he was accused of spying. Choudhury, head of the Bangladeshi branch of the International Forum for Literature and Culture for Peace, was to have spoken about the role of the media in peacemaking in the Middle East.

Local mayor shoots Pakistani journalist

Pakistani reporter Sajid Tanoli was shot dead in January by a local mayor in North-West Frontier Province, Reporters sans Frontieres reports. Thirty-four-year-old Tanoli wrote for Shumaal (North). He had named Nazim (Mayor) Khalid Javed in a report on trafficking in alcohol, which is banned in Pakistan. Javed shot Tanoli five times in broad daylight in the town of Manshera. Then he fled. Police arrested his brother and son as accomplices. The National Press Union condemned the killing.

Reporter secretly detained for a month

After Pakistani authorities denied for a month that they held freelance journalist Khawar Mehdi Rizvi, they charged him on January 24 with sedition, conspiracy and impersonation. Judges in Karachi earlier called for him to be produced in court.

Rizvi went to Quetta in Baluchistan with two French journalists from the weekly, L’Express who were inquiring into Taliban activity on the Afghan border. The Frenchmen did not have permission to go to Quetta and were arrested with Rizvi. In court, the Frenchmen were given six-month sentences, changed to £2,000 fines on appeal. They deny a police allegation that Rizvi hired two other Pakistanis – also charged – to impersonate Taliban in a video. They say the video is accurate.

Pakistan journalists union president Ahfaz ur Rehman complained in December about the detention on sedition charges of a young journalist, Rasheed Azam, who published a picture of soldiers beating a crowd of Baluchi youths. He also complained about the firing of a car in Lahore belonging to Aamir Mir of The Herald, an influential monthly which President Musharraf is reported to have called ‘anti-army’. Rehman said journalists were harassed by intelligence agents. At the All Pakistan Newspapers Society golden jubilee in January, its president, Arif Nizami, also complained about harassment but praised President Musharraf for tolerating harsh criticism.

Aziz Qureshi was sentenced to life imprisonment in January for the bombing of the Karachi advertising office of the national Urdu daily Nawa-I-Waqt. Four people died including two managers and a woman who, unknowingly, had the bomb in her purse

Some Pakistani media workers have not had a pay increase for over eight years, writes the president of the International Federation of Journalists, Christopher Warren. He has complained to editors, newspaper owners and President Musharraf that legally binding decisions by the wage board have not been carried out. He says: “Press freedom cannot thrive when journalists do not have adequate wages.”

A workshop in Islamabad in January, attended by over 100 journalists, heard that the number of publications in Pakistan had halved in the year to 2001.

The Hindu fights back

Narasimhan Ram, editor-in-chief of The Hindu, Chennai (Madras), has described in the Financial Times his paper’s fight-back in November when the Tamil Nadu Assembly tried to jail five of its journalists and the editor of an opposition newspaper. The assembly objected to the language in which The Hindu had reported speeches by chief minister J.Jayalithaa. The five journalists included the 70-year-old publisher and the editor, N.Ravi, Ram’s brother, who attended the CJA conference in Dhaka.

On what had seemed a dull day, Ram got word that the police were approaching. The five made themselves scarce while the police raided the premises. The following day, Tamil Nadu police searched Ram’s car in the neighbouring state of Karnataka. All this provoked outrage from journalists, democratic groups, political parties and The Hindu’s readers. The arrest of the five was blocked by the Supreme Court.

Farewell, Ian and Edna

CJA members held a farewell party, at Derek Ingram’s house, for London staff members Ian Gillham (above) and Edna Tweedie who stood down when the CJA HQ moved in Trinidad. Edna (pictured with bamboo leaving gift) was the CJA’s executive secretary for 22 years and is continuing to look after the CJA’s London finances. For three years Ian has been executive director, a role in which Martin Mulligan said he had shown unfailing courtesy and intelligence. Martin said of Edna that she had given invaluable counsel. Ian Gillham praised Derek Ingram’s efforts in holding the CJA’s work together over the years.

Chill wind in Zimbabwe

This piece by SANDRA NYAIRA, political editor of The Daily News, Harare, was first published in the British Journalism Review, issue 14.4

The most difficult survival technique I had to learn, after coming from Zimbabwe to the UK to study, was how to cope with the cold of an English winter. Then the Zimbabwean government closed down the paper I work for, The Daily News, the only independent daily newspaper in the country. So I remain out in the cold.

Late on September 12, I received messages from my colleagues at the News, telling me armed police had appeared at the company premises to confiscate computers and documents and close down the paper. A court ruling stated the company should have complied with an oppressive media law to register its staff and the newspaper. The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act was the culmination of a long campaign by President Mugabe and his cronies to muzzle the press.

These messages left me shocked. My colleagues and I had contributed so much to the making of a title that cam from nowhere to provide a voice for the voiceless and become the best-selling paper in the country. During my year in the UK, I had missed the thrill of the newsroom. I was upbeat about returning to share the knowledge I had gained during my time at City University.

I had twice been arrested in Zimbabwe for writing stories which the Junior Minister of Information and Publicity, Jonathan Moyo, said “criminally defamed” Robert Mugabe. The stories were about corruption scandals involving the construction of the new Harare International Airport terminal by a company owned by a Saudi magnate, Hani Yamani. Yamani claimed to have paid huge sums of money to Mugabe’s henchmen to ease his way through the deal. He was also set to construct Mugabe’s mansion just outside Harare but was getting tired of being milked daily and wrote a letter of complaint to Mugabe. I saw the letter and revealed its contents. This resulted in my arrest despite the government’s failure to dispute the letter. Yamani confirmed my story. The case is still pending.

I had also brought a libel action against Moyo. He claimed I was a liar when I reported what the vice-president, Joseph Msika, had said in trying to lure back a charismatic former member, Edgar Tekere, to help reignite the failing fire in the ruling Zanu PF party. Moyo denounced me on state television and radio and in all the state newspapers, prompting my mother to ask me to leave The Daily News because she was worried for my safety. In the run-up to the disputed 2002 presidential election, Zanu PF youths had camped outside her house, put up Mugabe’s posters in the entire street and chanted slogans against me, my colleagues, the opposition, my paper and “your masters – the British imperialists”.

I couldn’t leave the paper. I loved my job, and writing was all I had done since leaving college. Tekere came to my rescue, saying my report of what the vice-president had said was “almost verbatim”. I sued Moyo and The Herald, a state-controlled daily papers, for 250,000 Zim dollars, £30 at current exchange rates.

We, the journalists at The Daily News, have no protection at all. It was painful for me to be so far away, hearing how my colleagues were arrested after the company decided to put out a paper regardless of the court’s decision. A colleague, Columbus Mavhunga, sent me a text message revealing he had gone into hiding fearing arrest and telling me my name was also on the government’s wanted list for writing for an illegal publication. He said: No one ever thought that, after all we have gone through with the government, they would actually close us down. It all happened so fast.”

I remember another day, 29 January 2001, when I went to the office after the paper’s printing press had been reduced to a heap of useless scrap metal by suspected government agents. I remembered the pain we felt, and the unity and the zeal among the few journalists who were on duty. I am still proud that we managed to produce a paper regardless, using other printers. Staff morale remained high. I am told that spirit remains today although some journalists have since given up the fight.

Most of the newspapers in Zimbabwe are now owned by the government, which controls all radio and television stations. The country has three vibrant, independent weekly newspapers. Their impact is limited because they are expensive and have small print-runs. Two other independent weekly newspapers are owned by people with strong links to the Zanu PF party.

The closure of The Daily News is symptomatic of the problems facing the media in Zimbabwe. Twenty-two years after independence, genuine democracy and press freedom remain pipedreams. The conditions of journalists are insufferable. Seventy have been arrested and charged so far under the obnoxious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. As a result of AIPPA, democracy is stifled in a country where journalists live in fear. Freedom of expression enabled us journalists to expose government and private sector corruption, mismanagement of the economy and violations of basic human rights. That freedom is no more.

Journalists at The Daily News and independent weekly papers have long been subjected to torture, intimidation and harassment by an intolerant regime. My colleague, Julius Zava, was beaten up by hired hands and veterans of the fight for liberation. His crime? Working for a paper that the government ludicrously claims is sponsored by the British government. I also remember the many occasions when I had to run for dear life as marauding youths demanded to know why I “hated” the government. It distresses me that, after all the suffering, the threats and the harassment, our efforts have been buried by a ruthless government.

Only drastic change – a new government or changes within Zanu PF – can prevent the media in Zimbabwe being forced into radical self-censorship as seasoned journalists continue to flee the country. The independent media will remain shackled, while the state media will go on unethically spewing falsehoods – unless the journalists want to lose their jobs. It may be scant consolation to Daily News journalists but the listening figures for foreign radio stations broadcasting into Zimbabwe are soaring, particularly in rural areas. Radio has become the primary cheap source of information.

In the absence of more scrutiny from the international community, the attacks on independent journalists by Mugabe’s government will continue. The rest of the world needs to hang in there. The campaigning for a free press in Zimbabwe must not stop.

Vice-president Padmaja Padman writes that the CJA will not be doing a global study of official secrets, as discussed at the Dhaka conference. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative studied the subject for its Commonwealth Summit report.

The Daily News publishes again

The Daily News in Harare resumed publishing on January 22, pending a court decision on February 18 on government and media-commission applications to close it down again. On January 21, police obeyed a court order to leave The News’s printing works. But, to journalists’ dismay, the Supreme Court decided the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act does not conflict with the constitution.

The Zimbabwe Independent’s manager and a reporter have been charged with criminal defamation. On January 10, the paper published a report headed Mugabe grabs plane for Far East holiday, alleging that the president went to Malaysia in a plane normally used for the Harare-London route. The Media and Information Commission’s chairman has also threatened action against the Independent for publishing a letter to the editor calling Zimbabweans “an unthinking lot”.

To help embattled journalists, Zimbabwe’s Legal Resources Foundation has updated its guide to the country’s rapidly changing media laws.

Nigerian journalists harassed

The Media Foundation for West Africa is concerned about harassment and arrest of journalists in Nigeria. In November three editors of Insider Weekly were detained and charged with sedition against the vice-president. Two newspaper editors were arrested in Ekiti state for having copies of the Ekiti Razor, said to disparage the governor. In January, security men interrogated Tony Eluemunor, seeking the source of a report about a plot to unseat the Anambra state governor. Nine journalists were suspended indefinitely after Ondo state radio reported a planned strike against petrol price rises.

Threat to Ugandan reporters: rebel had their phone numbers

A Ugandan army major in January accused Andrew Mwenda and Wanyama Wangah of the independent newspaper The Monitor of collaborating with rebels. A Lord’s Resistance Army commander had been found to have their phone numbers. An law, not so far used, threatens journalists with death if what they write supports terrorism.

A website www.jafe.org has been launched for African journalists in exile

Police raid on Canadian reporter’s home condemned

Canadian police raided the home and office of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O’Neill on January 21. She had written in November about Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian who was detained in New York while on the way to Canada in 2002. He was sent from New York to Syria where he says he was tortured. O’Neill claimed the police had linked Arar to Al Qaeda. He denies such a link.

Zambian ministers didn’t see the joke

Satirist and columnist Roy Clarke went into hiding for ten days in January after Zambia’s home affairs minister, Ronnie Shikapwasha, gave him 24 hours to leave the country. In his Spectator column in The Post newspaper on January 1, Clarke told a story about an elephant, a knock-kneed giraffe and long-fingered baboons in a satirical comment on Zambia’s government. Ministers didn’t see the joke.

Five journalists associations issued a statement in his support. However, the High Court stayed his deportation, on which Judge Musonda will decide in March.

Clarke, born in Britain, has lived in Zambia 40 years, working as a metallurgist, then teaching. Campaigning against apartheid, he was arrested in Soweto in South Africa in 1962. Clarke suggested that ejecting him from Zambia was a ploy to exile his wife, a Zambian who for 30 years has campaigned for women’s rights in a male-dominated society. The Post’s editor, Fred M’membe, visited him in his hideout, bearing Black Label whisky. M’membe published another Clarke piece, headed Baboon.

In court, Patrick Matabini, for Clarke, said that the home affairs minister had to prove a danger to peace and good order, if he was to deport someone. Solicitor-General Sunday Nkonde said that the minister could deport who he wished, without giving reasons. Clarke, he added, had shown poor journalistic judgment. Matibini replied that, if the court upheld the decision to deport Clarke, this would be a licence to eject anyone who, in the government’s sole judgment, was practising poor journalism.

Zambian commercial radio Breeze FM, based in Chipata, was ordered by the information ministry on January 1 to stop broadcasting BBC programmes. Breeze managing director Mike Daka, who attended the CJA conference in Namibia, said the ministry letter disappointed his audience who liked a broader view of the world.

Police apologised to Mackson Wasamunu of the Zambia Daily Mail. He was beaten by officers when he photographed them removing street vendors in Lusaka.

CJA executive member Cindy Wirtz has written in an African feature service, GEM, about the failure to protect women against violence in the Seychelles.

Twelve radio and TV stations in Cameroon were ordered to close at the end of December. In Uganda, 50 radios are being shut down for not paying their permit fees. Many are community radios with no cash. In Kenya police raided news stands selling ‘alternative’ newspapers such as the Independent, Kenya Confidential, Citizen, News Post and Weekly Wembe. A minister said they were unregistered.

Zanzibar’s only independent paper, Dira, was banned in November.

Police in Sierra Leone destroyed equipment at the independent daily Awoko on January 21 and attacked journalists who went to an accident involving a police car.

Editor-in-chief Abdullah Ahmed was dismissed in November after The New Straits Times criticised a cut in Malaysia’s pilgrimage quotas for Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

All the wisdom on journalism

The clock reads 4.27 am. Outside, a pale sun begins to emerge from behind my neighbours’ red-tiled roofs. Inside, the coffee has long gone cold. But I don’t care. Six months’ hard labour has just come to an end. One chapter of this book completed…only 12 to go.

This is British journalist and lecturer Tony Harcup writing about writing his new book: Journalism - Principles and Practice (www.sagepublications.com). Six months may seem a long while for a single chapter but Harcup has spent it interviewing journalists, reading just about every relevant book (including one of mine) and distilling all this into a readable 150 pages. He combines wisdom about journalism as journalists practise it with wisdom from the critical university studies that journalists don’t read. But, as they often demonstrate, they don’t read their own papers either.

Harcup’s most pithy wisdom is about writing. Kiss and tell – keep it short and simple, and tell who, what, where, when, why and how. And be sure to tell the readers who said so.

On feature-writing he has a pithy quote from another journalist, Sally Adams. She suggests that, before touching the keyboard, you ask yourself what’s

* The most startling fact you’ve discovered?

* The best anecdote you’ve unearthed?

* The most astonishing quote?

* The most surprising event?

* The item with the greatest ‘Hey, did you know that..?’ factor?

But don’t get too carried away by the most astonishing quote. You could have misheard. Harcup writes that a reporter for one of Britain’s leading papers, The Guardian, thought a black actress had said: “This is a time to support apartheid because it’s unfashionable.”

She was a candidate for election at the time and what she actually said was: “This is a time to support a party….” The Guardian published an embarrassed apology.

Harcup does not recommend e-mail interviews. Personally, I have found them a useful way of acquiring facts, even quite revealing facts. People have more time than on the phone to consider their replies, and the difficulty of taking readable notes of a phone call is avoided. Even people who can scarcely speak English manage to reply to e-mails in English, no doubt with help from colleagues.

British journalism has just hit the headlines with a fight to the near-death between the government and the BBC over a radio report that the government had sexed up an intelligence dossier about destructive weapons supposedly held by Iraq. One issue was what a scientist, who committed suicide after being quoted anonymously in the report, actually said. There are two lessons for journalists. Make sure you take notes that stand up to scrutiny; and find a second source of allegations if you possibly can.

David Spark

Sing your way to the radio station

If your first words of the day are to be uttered on air, sing on your way to work. This is one of the more way-out suggestions in Basic Radio Journalism, by Paul Chantler and Peter Stewart (www.focalpress.com).

Here is more of their advice:

Remember the power and the glory of a story often lies in its sound. Record and use that natural sound.

Avoid interviewing across a desk. The sound will bounce off its surface.

Don’t ask journalist colleagues, on air, questions to which they may not know the answers. It makes your radio station sound less credible.

Build relationships with people when the news is good. Then, when a bad story breaks, you already have the contacts.

Dullness is a sin. Look for the detail which brings a story to life.

Once you have carried a good story, don’t let it die too quickly. Reactions and comments can keep the story going in later bulletins.

Never swear anywhere near a studio.

Chantler and Stewart are journalists, not journalism teachers. They tell novice broadcasters, in detail, what they have to do and how to do it, both when they start out in radio and when they get to run things. . Radio news is not broadcasting to the masses. It is telling individual listeners what is going on. It also needs to find different ways of telling them, for different bulletins.

Chantler and Stewart are enlightening on how writing for newspapers and for radio differs. Radio needs simpler opening sentences and a more conversational style: an opening sentence is also in effect the headline. Radio avoids using a name, or a story’s most important word, at the beginning of an opening sentence. People listening with half an ear may miss it and fail to understand the story. Radio requires clarity, because listeners must understand something unfamiliar at first hearing.

Newspapers like to get to the news quickly, leaving the news source till the end of the sentence or even the next sentence

The gap between the rich and poor is growing. That’s the claim in a Labour party report.

The price of coffee is going up again, according to traders.

Radio prefers the order of ordinary speech, which also makes the source clear from the outset.

A Labour party report claims the gap between rich and poor is growing.

Traders say the price of coffee is going up again.

News items must be carefully chosen for their importance, interest and immediacy and their impact on people’s lives. Listeners can’t choose what to hear.