Journalists don’t need threats disguised as protection
Staff Writer | Monday December 1, 2025 06:00
President Boko spoke as though he was doing the media a favour, almost like a stern father warning wayward children, insisting he was “helping them” avoid imprisonment for defamation by admonishing them early. It is an odd kind of help. The sort that pulls out a whip and calls it a hug. The danger is not the criticism. Journalists are criticised all the time. They should. However, the danger lies in repeating the claim that “journalists write lies” as if repetition alone can transform an accusation into evidence. As the saying goes, repeating a lie many times does not make it true. And repeating a generalisation many times does not make it accurate. If the President or anyone, for that matter, believes that certain journalists or certain media houses have peddled falsehoods, the remedy is simple.
Point to the story, show where the error lies, name the newsroom, and demand accountability. Journalism thrives on scrutiny. But scrutiny that refuses to identify the object of its complaint becomes something else, a weapon, not a corrective tool. Listening to the President reminded those steeped in the profession that if you want to correct a journalist, you bring them the article. If you want to intimidate them, you bring them the “atmosphere.” On Tuesday, we were given the atmosphere. Thus, anyone who has ever worked inside a newsroom knows that mistakes happen. You double-check a figure and still get it wrong. You interview someone in a noisy environment and mishear a name. You type in a rush and your grammar stumbles. When these things happen, responsible journalists apologise and correct the record, which has happened in our media. That is not lying. That is human fallibility. To lie is deliberate, malicious, and calculated. To make an error is to be imperfect. Collapsing these two things into one moral category is not only intellectually dishonest, it is also dangerous.
This is what makes President Boko’s posture so troubling. You cannot say you are protecting journalists from imprisonment by “warning them,” while in the same breath painting the entire profession as inherently dishonest and even mocking their grammar. It is like telling someone that you are helping them avoid drowning by pointing repeatedly to the water and reminding them what might happen if they misstep, instead of simply building a bridge. If the government truly sees itself as anchored in human rights, then surely the greatest protection it can offer journalists is not admonition but reform. It would be a clear, unequivocal commitment to decriminalising defamation. That is the standard set by modern democracies. That is the expectation of international human-rights bodies, including the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which has repeatedly urged states to abolish criminal libel laws because of their chilling effect on free expression. Across Africa, there is a growing consensus that defamation has no place in criminal law. Ghana repealed criminal libel laws as far back as 2001, and to this day, that reform is credited with invigorating its media landscape. Kenya’s High Court ruled in 2017 that criminal defamation violates the constitutional guarantee of free expression.
Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court made a similar finding in 2014. Sierra Leone took the bold step in 2020 of completely abolishing colonial-era seditious libel provisions, a move hailed globally as a democratic milestone. Internationally, the trend is even clearer. The United Kingdom scrapped criminal defamation in 2009. The United States relies solely on civil defamation, protected robustly by the First Amendment. Norway, Mexico, Argentina, Sri Lanka - the list of democracies moving towards abolition continues to grow. In academic circles, scholars such as Robert Post and Eric Barendt have long argued that criminal defamation is incompatible with the epistemic function of democracy: the idea that truth emerges through contestation, not suppression; through counter-speech, not fear. Yet here at home, Botswana continues to hold onto criminal defamation, and instead of hearing a commitment to reviewing the law, we hear cautionary tales addressed to journalists as though the real danger is not the outdated law but the journalists themselves.
If the President genuinely feels aggrieved by a story, the path is clear. Demand a correction. Ask for the right of reply. Complain with relevant structures or bodies. Sue for civil defamation if necessary. That is how democracies resolve disputes. What is not acceptable is to issue sweeping statements that imply an entire profession is dishonest, lazy, or uneducated. It is like condemning all judges because one gives a faulty ruling or dismissing all doctors because one misdiagnoses a patient. It is intellectually sloppy, and it does nothing to strengthen the accountability ecosystem. There is also a philosophical point here. Democracies rely on contestation. John Stuart Mill famously argued that even wrong or imperfect speech holds value because it forces truth to sharpen itself through engagement. Hannah Arendt reminds us that the moment power becomes allergic to questioning, it begins shifting from authority to domination. A government that embraces criticism, even when it feels unfair, honours democracy. A government that meets criticism with warnings, threats, or moralising lectures merely performs democracy.
Botswana stands at an important crossroads. We describe ourselves as a constitutional democracy built on openness, dialogue, and accountability. Yet our laws still allow for journalists to be imprisoned for speech. And our leaders sometimes speak as though journalists are a problem to be managed rather than partners in nation-building. The irony is that journalists do not fear criticism. They engage in criticism daily. What they fear is a climate where criticism is accompanied by reminders that jail remains a possibility. That kind of climate suppresses speech, discourages investigation, and weakens institutions. It tells whistleblowers to stay quiet.
It tells reporters to play it safe. It tells the public to distrust anyone the powerful label as dishonest. Botswana cannot afford that. The truth is simple: if President Boko wishes to help journalists, he must lead the country towards decriminalising defamation. That is the true mark of a human-rights government. That is how you strengthen accountability. That is how you protect free expression. That is how you demonstrate that leadership is mature enough to confront criticism without resorting to the shadow of imprisonment. Mistakes will always happen in journalism because journalists are human. But mistakes do not make them liars. And those who correct their mistakes are not the enemies of democracy but its workers. Let us therefore move towards a Botswana where disagreement is not criminal, where criticism is not conflated with malice, and where leaders respond to stories they dislike with evidence, not atmospheres. Truth does not need threats to defend itself.