Note: the open letter/article below was first published in the Daily
Observer, last thursday June 17. It is my understanding that Observer's
newly-appointed Editorial Adviser Ngaing Thomas, has since responded to my
comments. For a balnced coverage of opinion, it will be great if Mr.
Thomas's rejoinder is posted on the L for public consumption. Could somebody
on the L in possession of the said article, please do so?
Dear Amadou Samba,
by Cherno Baba Jallow
in Detroit, USA.
Solemn promise by your new Daily Observer Company management never to
interfere with the the editorial independence of the Observer newspaper
should be taken with a pinch of salt. It lacks contour and reality. Barely a
week after your management came into office, Observer's News Editor Demba A.
Jawo, one of The Gambia's most principled, objective journalists, was given
the sack. You've not given any reasons why Jawo was fired. Hiding behind a
veneer of managerial poetic justice, your managing director Sariang Ceesay,
bereft of specificity, simply said the Daily Observer was undergoing
"restructuring."
So: Jawo had to be weeded out. Official policy seems to indicate that Jawo's
unceremonious dismissal was the consequence of corporate infirmity. But
reality points otherwise. Jawo's sacking was a cynical departure, on your
part, from realism surrounding your much-vaunted promise to keep Observer's
editorial independence intact.
By sacking Jawo for no genuine reasons, but apparently for his acerbic
opinions on the wrong policies of the APRC government and its lackeys,
you've committed grave injustice to press freedom. Worse, you've presented
us with the horrifying spectre of the imminence of draconian measures to
whittle Observer's editorial independence and drag it into Stygian depths of
unchartered self-censorship.
Observer's future now rests on the bridle and saddle of managerial
authoritarianism. Obscurantism. And determinism. Jawo has gone;Baba Galleh
Jallow, too. In a span of one week, both the news editor and editor-in-chief
respectively, saw their pivotal careers at the Observer quashed and sullied.
Who's next? Your editorial board is now in disarray. Denied the collective
wisdom and experience of these two hardworking editors and columnists, your
newspaper is destined to experience a monumental depletion of skills,
talents and editorial leadership.
Perhaps, you need a serious reminder that the Observer under Kenneth Y. Best
enjoyed a crescendo of journalistic credibility. From a modest beginning on
Election Day in 1992 to the last day you acquired full ownership of the
Daily Observer Company, the Observer continued to be an independent,
indispensable voice in the vanguard of good governance and social change in
The Gambia.
The Observer augmented reading habits for a greater number of Gambians. It
successfully chronicled the triumphs and failures, dilemmas and aspirations,
new-fangled ideas and outmoded shibboleths, of our society. Best made the
Observer champion the cause of democracy and free speech, set the pace for
change, crusade against corruption, groom fledgling ideas, later gushing
into the eddies of rational public opinion. Observer's success under Best
was the height of untrammeled exchange of ideas and adroit productivity, of
honest-thinking Gambians.
Are you ready to break that tradition? Is it in your business interest, and,
ethical values and beliefs, to see the Observer wallow into stunted
journalistic growth? Metamorphose into reticence in the full view of
unchecked authoritarianism? Governmental improprieties? Societal
abrasiveness? You would think that because you command the will and wallet
over the survival of the Daily Observer Company as a business entity, the
Observer has now become your own private hacienda, subject to your whims and
caprices, not to the dictates of unfettered ideas and opinions.
Think again. The Observer, said Best in his last words before deportation,
"is no longer my property, it is the property of the Gambian people." Best
knew the Observer, a paper he had come to live with through thick and thin
in both Liberia and The Gambia, had grown larger than he could ever have
fathomed. The Observer had developed an innate tendency for invincibility
and indispensability.
Understandably, you're no Kenneth Best. But you can still learn from Best on
the mechanics of newspaper operation. His journalistic creed was thus:report
the facts without fear or favour;create a dialogue between people and
people, government and people.
The need for that in our country has never been greater, now. Our nation is
undergoing traumatic political times. We came out of military rule none the
wiser;tension and divisiveness continue to plague our political system.
Flagrant human rights abuses abound. Government continues to be bigger, and
out of sync with the miseries and concerns of the common man. It continues
to be overtly sensitive and averse to dissent, thus stifling creativity and
profundity of free political thinking, indispensable to the viability and
survival of our society.
And the need for uninhibited flow of information becomes ever more
undiminished, given the intricacies, subterfuges and intemperance of the
consequences of the actions of our political leadership. Our new crop of
leaders, displaying varying degrees of legerdemain and unaccountability, has
kept us uninformed and misinformed on matters of governance.
Unenligthened leadership has not only frustrated the national collective to
appraise the actions of our government, but has also churned out a
bumper-crop of phantom policies and promises, aggravating rather than
lessening, the coarsening of the affairs of governance.
Where a government fails or refuses to be a ligthening rod for its citizens
or acts despotically against them, then it becomes the sacred duty of a free
press to provide voice to the voiceless, strength to the downtrodden,
information to the uninformed.
In the face of governmental dictatorship, a free press becomes the last
bastion of hope - for the protection of freedoms and liberties of a helpless
citizenry, for the exposure and censure of the recalcitrance and despotism
of a brutish leadership, for the marshalling of ideas and opinions on
societal realities.
I conceptualize all this for your encompassing understanding to rise above
any hackneyed proclivities to blend partisan politics with objective
journalism. The two do not mix;they're at variance. Which is why you should
draw a fine line between your patronage with the APRC regime, and, the
conscience and conscientiousness inherent with the proprietorship of a free,
independent newspaper like the Observer.
If the conscience of good journalism will not appeal to you, atleast
commercial profiteering will. Your buy-out of the Daily Observer Company is
a business venture, and like every other business venture, you're motivated
to maximize profits and stay in business. Of course, over the years, you
have displayed considerable enterprise and flair. You're a shrewd and
successful businessman, making great strides in entrepreneurial innovation.
Such should be the central planks of your Mission Statement as the new
publisher of the Observer: rejigging Observer's managerial inefficiencies,
revamping its sagging finances, rewarding its hardworking yet frustrated,
personnel, and rekindling its journalistic integrity. Here lies the line of
demarcation.
Editorial matters should be out of your purview. You're no journalist in the
first place;so isn't your managing director. Therefore, any undue meddling
into Observer's editorial independence will be counter-productive and
inimical to press freedom. Jawo's sacking represents your nascent intrusion
into the sacredness of Observer's editorial integrity. It's a bad start for
your management.
The collapse of the Observer will certainly be a great loss to Gambians, but
it won't be the end of history. It will leave a vacuum to be filled by
honest-thinking, principled-minded Gambians. Best saw the absence of a daily
newspaper in The Gambia as a vacuum and he filled it. History continues....
In the meantime, we keep our eyes firmly fixed on Observer's shaky future.
Well, wait: you have the means to keep the Observer intact. And alive. The
decision is ultimately yours.
The author is a former Daily Observer sub-editor and political columnist.
He's currently a student of Economics and International Relations at Wayne
State University in Detroit, Michigan.
_______________________________________________________________
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