By the time you read this, the minister will have notified Parliament about her intention to introduce the controversial bill for debate. At a time when the bill has elicited such controversial debate the minister is acting rather out of turn. What is even more worrying is that she is using tax pay's resources to dupe the public by giving them a sanitized and highly partisan view of what this monstrous bill is about. The honourable minister goes around the country to Kgotla meetings telling people that there is sinister about the bill while she fully knows that there is. Minister Moitoi knows that media practitioners are opposed to the bill and we expect her to at least be honest and tell the public that there is strong opposition to her hastily concocted totalitarian bill. If the minister is a democrat who believes in consultations as we think, we expected her to travel to these Kgotla meetings with a representative of the media in order to give the public a complete picture on a bill that will have long term effects. Otherwise the motive of the minister looks suspect, if not outright insidious.
We are worried that Venson-Moitoi has descended to desperate depths in her spin. On Monday, she single-handedly participated in Radio Botswana's Liveline Programme to explain to listeners her position on the bill. It was a complete torture listening to the minister in her barren attempt to subject media practitioners to the tyranny of some gullible radio callers. It is even a shame that professionals at Radio Botswana could be used to broadcast such a programme. Even if the issue was less contentious, Radio Botswana managers should have known that there are at least two sides to a story and they should have brought a representative of the media to balance the minister's views. But lo and behold, the age old tenet of balance was conveniently forgotten and the listeners were subjected to Venson-Moitoi's partisan views on the media, which were often untrue and highly sanitised. Why did Radio Botswana air such a highly unbalanced programme? Were the managers at Radio Botswana under pressure from the minister or they just wanted to placate her?
