De Frutos urged the media to strictly scrutinise the politicians ahead of this year’s general elections, especially those aspiring for republican presidency, adding that the media should continue pushing politicians to discuss issues and hold them accountable.

“You the media are very important towards enhancing transparency and accountability in elections and you should continue pushing, and scrutinise all politicians and hold them accountable. Keep on pushing the politicians to bring out issues, and this is what The Post is doing, it is important to investigate and bring out issues, please keep it up,” she said.

De Frutos noted that the media plays an important role in combating corruption and help in building democracy and good governance in the country, a situation she said can only be achieved by providing checks and balances to the government officials and the line ministries.

Press Freedom Committee (PFC) of The Post Chairperson Chansa Kabwela described De Frutos’ sentiments as encouraging, but confessed that despite such achievements, there has been a lot of challenges the private media continues to face in carrying out their duties.

Kabwela pointed out continuous threats from the government as one of the major challenges which the government is used to cripple the normal operations of media, especially in a situation where the media house brings out negative issues on the government.

“I need to mention that in coming up with such results, there are challenges, because when you bring out information which is not in good taste with the government, it (government) will aim at crippling your normal operation. We have seen media houses being threatened just because they bring out negative information about the government,” explained Kabwela.

In reaction to the comment by the Swedish Ambassador, Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Zambia chairperson Daniel Sikazwe said the media in Zambia has the potential to do better than what it is currently doing, especially in an environment where it is allowed to operate freely without any political influence.

Sikazwe described the current media working environment as not completely free, as there are still more media freedom-related violations ranging from physical and verbal harassment of media practitioners.

“The media has the potential to do better, I think the only problem is that it is not left to operate freely. There are still high levels of media harassment especially by those in the political circles,” he said. //End//
 
Reagan Malumo
Programme Specialist: Media Freedom Monitoring and Research
Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Regional Secretariat
21 Johann Albrecht St
Private Bag 13386
Windhoek
Namibia
Phone: +264 61 232 975
Fax: +264 61 248 016
Mobile: +264 81 311 2626
Official Email: reagan(@)misa.org
Private Email: reagan32002(@)yahoo.com

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