As a journalist who has worked abroad and here, I was shocked to read unprofessional articles from prestigious media including The Economist, BBC, etc who just regurgitate the usual “CCM will win with landslide” without any consideration that Tanzania was having a transformational and phenomenon election. This historic election was unfolding every day in front of us and on the campaign trail where opposition candidates were drawing huge crowds, yet these international journalist were comfortable to get information from their State house sources, Dar es Salaam handlers (who stayed in Nairobi or South Africa or best case scenario in Dar Es Salaam) and sometimes has telephone interviews with journalists travelling with the incumbent president .
I am proud that Tanzanians have humiliated the international media and shown them that they have no idea what journalism is about and how they have been misleading the world about Tanzania. If the international media believes that Tanzania is not important enough to have professional staff based here then they should just refrain from reporting all together instead of misleading their audiences IMHO
There are so many instances where the international media has reported the wrong information about Tanzania to the world. I just can't get my head to comprehend why such journalists whom we are made to believe are the best and most "competent" can have it so wrong. It's time such media giants such as CNN and BBC put their people on the ground here in Tanzania instead of relying on sources based in Kenya,South Africa etc to feed them with information about Tanzania. What a shame. I second your opinions and thoughts Maria.
ReplyDeletethats true Marie..
ReplyDeleteI think we need to have our own culture of journalism in Tanzania.Those so called media giants will have nothing to report as long as our country remains in peace. Let us join our efforts and have our own media giants like what is happening in China and in Arab countries. off course our people need to be informed but how long shall they be ill feeding our people with wrong news from the non civilized media giants. The only news they prefer its all concerning conflicts, never hear them reporting about citizens efforts to solve their social problems: water,electricity and healthy. The only time you will see them with their flashing cameras its when you have conflicts which will lead o blood shed and their presence is not to solve the matter but to add fuel on the burning fire.
ReplyDeleteSo far I'm happy to see how much democracy there is in Tanzania. Many cabinet seats have been won by CHADEMA, that is already a huge leap towards achieving greater democracy. NAturally CCM might win, considering it is the oldest party with many many members, but just look at how many changes the president has done so far .... the very fact that there is encouragement for multipartism, peace, competition, democracy, is a huge achievement. Competition is always healthy, it makes people want to become better so that the can win next time ...... and next time and next time.
ReplyDeleteso far our Bunge is now alive comparing to previous years despite the non-democratic critics about discipline..the way I see it is this is realisticly what you would expect the Bunge to be when a democratic nation is in crisis as the one we are experiencing, the challenges that these bugdet-makers get makes the next generation to be precise in seroius matters in contrust to what we are seeing now in "BUNGE BAJETI"
ReplyDelete