By Madi Jobarteh
I want to thank the Gambia Press Union and the media community for recognizing me for the Press Freedom Hero Award 2024 at the GPU Journalism Awards on December 7.
In receiving this award, I am reminded of the value of freedom of the media and freedom of expression in society, especially in a society that underwent autocratic rule. For so long, the Gambian media has borne the brunt of tyrants, corrupt politicians, dishonest wealthy individuals, and evil people in power for merely doing their job in exposing corruption, abuse of power, and human rights violations.
To appreciate the role and value of the media is to remember the words of the famous English critic George Orwell, who said, “Freedom of the press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose.” While individuals must have the freedom and space to criticize and oppose, the role of the media is even more critical, which has been carved out in Section 207 of the Constitution,
“The press and other information media shall, at all times, be free to uphold the principles, provisions, and objectives of this Constitution, and the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people of The Gambia.”
This is the role and function that journalists of the Gambia have played ever since. A few days before his assassination in 2004 by the death squad of the tinpot dictator Yaya Jammeh, the veteran journalist Deyda Hydara buttressed the same constitutional role of the media in an interview with the independent newspaper that,
“… the fundamental law of this land guarantees that we make sure that the government is accountable to the people for things it does in their name. Again, we didn’t draft the Constitution, which got inspiration from the covenants and other internationally laid-down rules about freedom of expression. This means that even if the Constitution failed to empower us, we could rely on these instruments that The Gambia as a nation ratified.”
This comment by Deyda echoes the voice of the world-renowned American journalist Joseph Pulitzer, who said in 1909, after winning a criminal libel case brought on him by the corrupt American president Theodore Roosevelt and JP Morgan bank,
“Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mold the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.”
Thus, in receiving this award, I thank the GPU and, more importantly, remind our journalists, especially our young ones, of this noble profession’s glorious history and responsibility. I urge them to realize that journalism serves humanity, where one can save or destroy a life or society through work.
In that regard, I urge journalists always to have the courage and conviction to stand for and, by the truth, expose lies, abuse, and corruption wherever and from whomever they come. I wish to remind them of another giant in the Gambian media, the late William Dixon Colley (1913 – 2001), who co-founded the Gambia Press Union in 1978. Being a staunch defender of free press and against censorship, he once said, “If what one is saying is right and one strongly believes it is, one should go on saying it up to one’s grave.”
In conclusion, I leave these words of wisdom with our journalists from a BBC journalist, Clive Myrie, in a speech delivered at the Society of Editors’ media freedom conference on March 15, 2022, “For the zealous and the powerful, press freedom is annoying, even dangerous. They are the true enemies of the people.”
This is to say to our journalists, do not be afraid. Understand why people in power and governments seek to suppress, intimidate, and assault the media and journalists. As always, I shall continue to stand with journalists for freedom of the press and expression in the Gambia and beyond.
On this occasion, I now renew my 2014 ten-point World Press Freedom Resolution, which the Gambia government has just now respected.
1. Bring the killers of Deyda Hydara and Omar Barrow to justice now
2. Repeal all anti-media laws such as the Newspaper Amendment Act, sedition laws, false publication, insult laws, and giving false information to a public officer
3. Investigate all arson and physical attacks against media houses and journalists now
4. Decriminalize all media offenses now
5. Re-open all media houses now
6. Compensate all media houses and journalists who are victims of arbitrary closure, arrests, detention, torture now
7. Halt all acts of arbitrariness against the media immediately
8. Protect and promote free speech and media freedom asap
9. Provide tax concessions to media houses by January 2015
10. Provide annual subvention to GPU from the national budget by January 2015.
