On 14 Dec 2002 at 15:05, BambaLaye wrote:

> All:
>
> I think these incidents with the papers back home should warrant the
> managements of Gambia-L and Gambia-Post to send formal protests to the
> editors and demand that they refrain from unprofessional acts. It must be
> pointed to thme that what they have done is illegal, immoral and downright
> unprofessional.
> Meanwhile, such a protest should also serve to create a formal point of
> contact between the journalists and these forums for whence and where they
> would like to reproduce some of the articles written here for the benefit
> of their readers back home.
> It is a pitty that these are the same journalist who would not hesistate to
> write about the castigation of the Gambian online communities on their papers.
> This is simply disgusting, illegal, immoral, unethical, amateurish, negligent
> journalism and should be dealt with forthright.
>
> -BambaLaye
>

Bamba Laye and Gambia-L,
I am also very disappointed the way the Observer editor unprofesionally
publish postings from the Gambia-L without varifying the facts or consulting
the writers. The funny thing is that almost all of the midea houses are
subscribed to the Gambia-L but prefer to just keep mute about this issue and
others. I think these journalists should fish stories from the realities of
Dampah Kunda, Kuntaur, Sarre Ngai, Banjul etc. instead of copying stories from
the BBC website, Gambia-L and other Online forums in cyberspace and not
mentioning the source.

From a personal experience in November 1999 in Gambia, a journalist wanted me
to give him money before publishing and article and I refused as matter of
principle. First of all it was him who came to my home and wanted an interview
because he could see that I was there on visit with some students from Denmark.
The next day he came again and wanted money before the article could be
published and I refused and told him to leave the compound. I have since then
taken most stories with a gram of salt because you can't know if a certain
journalist have been paid before writing an article. I am sure we have some
very principled and profesional journalists back home and abroad but we have
many who are just praise singers and they are giving a bad reputation to their
profesion.

I hope that the Editor of the Daily Observer sends an apology to Joe Sambou,
Jabou and others whose articles were just picked from here and other online
forums and published without mentioning the source.

Momodou Camara
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   http://home3.inet.tele.dk/mcamara
   http://www.gambia.dk

**"Start by doing what's necessary, then what's
 possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible"***

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