Tanzanian media has been going through some challenges of late, getting a lot of backhand from state security organs.

Nothing new per se, just that the tension between the press and the government appeared to have calmed down to a live-and-let-live compromise in the past half-a-year or so.

A truce that seemed to come from our political culture that demands we think of ourselves as relatively peace-seeking folk. And yet, security organs have abandoned any pretence at the legendary soft-core diplomatic approach to resolving differences. This is definitely some “eish, bru.”

As a South African taximan put it to me when when talking about their somewhat soggy football team a few years back, at a time when they were hoping to represent very well at the World Cup: “you know you love them, eh, but eish, bru.”

Which is the equivalent of a dry-humoured headshake and an exclamation that ni shida! (There is a problem). An inside story that went quite against the prevailing great expectations of the time and the official mandate to insist that the team was better than it was. For the good of the country, of course. It is how I am beginning to think of the media business.

This year, Tanzania clawed it’s way up a global chart of media freedoms produced by Reporters Without Borders to get from the 70th position all the way to the 69th position in their World Press Freedom Index.

Which was remarked upon by The Citizen newspaper right about the same week that striking images were published of police strongly repelling journalists who wanted to report on the recent encounters between the opposition party Chadema and the Establishment.

The journalists in question, armed with righteousness and electronic gadgetry, went to do their jobs in the face of police warnings about the marches organised by the opposition.

Oddly enough, the media’s efforts didn’t seem to be quite the thing against dogs, shields, armoured paramilitary personnel wielding batons. It made for excellently revealing pictures by other journalists who managed to escape and publish. Their resulting work was distressing to the public eye.

Democratic space

Over the course of the Fourth Administration, Tanzania has enjoyed democratic space to grow a credible amount of press freedom. In truth this is one of the triumphs of the democratic laissez-faire that we have enjoyed for the past near-decade.

We got used to the idea that it was alright to express some truths and airing out our joys and grievances in the form of public dialogue. This was a hard won space: Tanzania isn’t and never has been an open society that way, we don’t embrace liberalism easily.

So the so-called free press has always had its work cut out for them — convincing the public that it is trustworthy has been just as much of a challenge as keeping the censorship at bay.

It’s not hard to to suspect that the impetus for success, and more importantly sales, has shaped the formal press. Like most Africans, we are a seriously information-thirsty society with a relentless obsession for each and every detail of the political machinations of our ruling classes.

The private sector has benefitted greatly from this, with a catch: nobody actually buys a newspaper if they can help it. Amongst other things, we like to share our newspapers where possible and broadcast, bless them, makes it easy for the average citizen to save part of their daily shilling by reading us the papers over the airwaves.

Which means that the newspapers have had to wage a war of escalation when it comes to headlines: stories getting shallower and more unforgivably biased, the big font getting increasingly hysterical to entice readers to come their way.

Given a choice between professional cool-headedness accompanied by the hard work that is needed for a solid grasp on a story, and the eye-searing wallet-catchers that turn a reader’s eye by playing on emotion, guess which way the need for a bit of profit might swing things? Eish, bru.

Hasn’t this played straight into the hands of the Establishment? The government has been issuing warnings about the dangers of citizens letting themselves get incited to sustained collective action by the press.

Thing is, it is actually quite hard to imagine people taking up a cause because of something they read about in the papers — the personal touch of a man wielding a loudspeaker is still the magic trick that makes a difference.

So if papers are still the thinking man’s game, and we the people aren’t buying them, where is this action going that is pitting the media against the Establishment? See you next week, folks.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: [email protected]