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Botswana prides itself, rightly, in being a democracy where journalists are not dragged out of newsrooms at dawn or hauled before courts for routine reporting. Compared to many parts of the continent, the media space remains open, civil and largely...

I read with keen interest a Facebook post in which the writer felt compelled to issue a disclaimer that a photograph circulating on social media, one allegedly depicting her with South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit, was not authentic. The...

The public apology issued by Tshepo Sethibe, popularly known as Moeladilotlhoko, was necessary but it was also an admission. An admission that a line was crossed. An admission that harm was done. And, most importantly, an admission that ethics...

There was a time in Botswana when public disagreements were largely about opinions. People argued passionately about policy, leadership or political direction, but they generally agreed on the basic facts.Today, that shared ground is shifting. We no...

As South Africans wound down the year in December, an uncomfortable but revealing pattern emerged from their cities. A young man was caught on a cellphone camera snatching a phone from a young woman before darting into a getaway car. In another...

In his book, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde writes that nowadays people “know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Over a century later, that line perfectly captures the modern dilemma of information. We live in an age...

Botswana is increasingly exhibiting early symptoms of an information cold war, a subtle but pervasive conflict unfolding within the digital public sphere. The transition from nearly six decades of uninterrupted Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) rule to...

There is a particular kind of silence that only journalists recognise, a silence that follows a story that worked. Not the triumphant silence after exposing a scandal, but the quiet absence of a disaster that almost happened. It is the silence of a...

Let us be honest. The world feels a little shaky nowadays. Democracy, that word we used to say with such pride, now feels fragile. Since 2019, the global democratic landscape has seen six straight years of decline. Think about that. Six years of...

Let us be honest. The world feels a little shaky nowadays. Democracy, that word we used to say with such pride, now feels fragile. Since 2019, the global democratic landscape has seen six straight years of decline. Think about that. Six years of...

In recent years, the media landscape in Botswana has undergone a profound shift. Social media platforms, podcasts, and instant messaging services have created unprecedented speed in the dissemination of news, but this rapidity often comes at the cost...

In April 1961, the world watched in disbelief as a small fleet of exiled Cubans, backed by the United States, attempted to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. The mission ended in disaster, hundreds were captured and the US military suffered a...

When the first printing presses arrived in Europe in the 15th Century, they sparked a revolution in the flow of knowledge, power, and accountability. Centuries later, Botswana experienced its own media awakening with the emergence of private...

When Parliament passed the Access to Information Act in 2024, it was hailed as a milestone for democracy. At long last, people said, there was a legal framework to demand information that for years had been locked away in dusty government files. On...

Debates about the role of public officials in engaging with the media are not new, yet they continue to reveal tensions about the meaning of accountability in democratic societies. One such debate arose recently when one colleague suggested that...