This calls for us to reflect once again on the state of the media and its role in this country. As we march as is customary on this day, let us all keep in mind the challenges and indeed opportunities that lie ahead. The media landscape, legislatively, is different from a few years back. We are faced with a government that is much more focused on constricting access to information as exemplified symbolically by the transfer of the Department of Information and Broadcasting Services to the Office of the President, or much more practically by the new culture of turning down requests for interviews and information from the private press. As the country's political landscape becomes more competitive as the number of marginal parliamentary seats seems to show, political forces from both sides seek to control the communication mediums to influence public perception. This remains a challenge for the media which is caught in a tight balancing act. On one side of the scale, there is the skewed nature of our political landscape from where we need to bring about some sort of equitable distribution of expression. On the other hand, we must avoid playing a partisan role in the skewed landscape. This remains a challenge not just for the media houses themselves but for individual journalists who have to deal with the situation on a daily basis. A weakened Parliament points to an even more controlled space as we can tell from the debates characterised by a dichotomy between the executive and the backbench. We are faced with an increasing demand for a freer society as the globalisation of the world shows. At this point, we need to ponder the meaning of new media. While all major publications have taken to new platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, our media culture has not changed to reposition us to engage with the challenges brought by the novelty. As we commemorate World Media Day tomorrow, we should reflect on this. We know that newspaper sales figures have either stagnated or are going down in major media markets where social networks and internet access is more pronounced. The print media will reach a crisis if we are not in it already.
That calls for the industry to devise a way forward that develops all aspects of the media industry. An even more crucial question remains what role media institutions in small markets like ours will have in the future, given the developing pattern where international or regional media houses diversify and enter into new markets. However, as practitioners of the craft, we know that there has never been a better time to be a journalist. This country and indeed the world has never needed a more probing journalism than now. So as we face these challenges and indeed take these available opportunities, let us toast to the future of a rabidly independent and strong media industry.
