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Sixty years is a long time in the life of a person but perhaps not so long in the life of a nation. On September 30, Botswana will turn 60 and there will rightly be speeches, celebrations and reminders of how far the country has travelled since...

Government ministries, corporations, universities, international organisations and development agencies increasingly employ former journalists as communication specialists, public relations practitioners and strategic advisers. The migration is...

A company launched a product and sought media coverage. That world is disappearing. Today, institutions do not merely communicate with the media. They increasingly operate as media organisations themselves.They have websites, newsletters, podcasts,...

From the outside, everything appears normal. Yet journalism is one of those professions in which an institution can remain operational long after it has begun losing its capacity. Retrenchments, mergers and newsroom contractions are usually explained...

Security was tangible because it had uniforms, checkpoints, surveillance and strategy. Conversely, some of the greatest threats confronting nations today arrive without passports.Interestingly, they arrive through smartphones, social media platforms,...

Today, no one needs to redraw Botswana’s borders to diminish its sovereignty. All it takes is a smartphone, a fabricated headline, a network of anonymous social media accounts, and, in some cases, a few well-placed brown envelopes.Now picture this....

There is a subtle but dangerous distinction between telling the truth and using the truth to deceive. At first, the statement appears contradictory. How can facts mislead? Yet anyone who has worked in a newsroom knows that truth, when stripped of...

We spoke warmly at first. The usual catching up and then, almost inevitably, our conversation drifted back to 1997. Not to speeches. Not to budget statements. But to the sky above Kinshasa.In my years as a journalist, I have had what many would call...

But beyond that headline figure lies a more troubling pattern: a 63 percent surge in self-censorship among journalists, 48 percent increase in efforts by governments and powerful actors to control media and a sustained decline in academic and...

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...