From: Abdalah Hamis

By Simon Mkina

http://blog.simonmkina.com/2013/10/time-for-journalists-to-minimize-harm.html

— Mass media has a well-known role to play in modern society. It can bring about radical changes and improve social circumstances as it influences our social, civil, cultural, political, economic and aesthetic outlook.

It is rightly said that media use is an index of development. The greater the use, the higher will be the level of education. As social beings, humans are sustained by mutual interactions, exchange of ideas, information and views with the fellow beings.

Illiteracy, which is nothing but absence of education and information is a stumbling obstruct for any aspect of development-
social, economic, political, cultural and even spiritual. Media has become the harbinger of development through the removal of these roadblocks and the provision of information and knowledge.

Apart from being the force of changes and knowledge, media is a vehicle of exposing various scams, scandals, frauds, embezzlements and many other cases of corruption leading to initiation of enquiries and other processes of prosecution against the perpetrators of these crimes.

However, media too suffers from some pitfalls; growing consumerism and materialism have adversely impacted our media. The partisan attitude, sectarian outlook and biased individualism in some sections of media are a testimony that media too is susceptible to harmful influences.

Often, in fierce rivalries, ethics of journalism are thrown out of the window to settle old scores. Running after opportunistic gains is another problem our media suffers from. The incidents of throwing are against the ethics of media.

So, in order for avoid chaos that media can bring about in the society, Journalists are supposed to obey their profession ethics when posting their articles or comments in their respective newspapers, television, radios, or on social forums.

Currently in Tanzania, there are some journalists who are going against journalism ethics by posting articles that are bias and that ethically they were not needed to be posted by professionals.

Such social forums have been created so that to enable people to present challenges that facing them whereby journalists have to use them as a tip of striker.

The Executive Secretary of Union of Press Clubs in Tanzania, Mr Aboubakar Karsan said recently that it was not wrong for journalists to comment or to post articles on their media or on social sites, but they have to make sure that they follow ethics of their professional by posting truth and well balanced posts.

He adds that instead journalists have to use those social sites to get tips for investigation stories so that to help people on challenges facing them, they use their platforms to write very cheap stories.

Furthermore, in asking journalists to adhere to their ethics, senior official from Media Council of Tanzania, John Mireny, recently was quoted saying that his council has noted a story in a mainstream paper of wide circulation that openly identified a victim of rape.

The story from the court, filed from Tarime District, in Tanzania gave explicit detailed information about the victim, including her name, age, and her residential details.
Mr Mireny said the article was identified by the MCT’s rapid response print media monitoring team.

Rape, he said, has recently become something of a human interest story-of-choice for the mainstream media in Tanzania. But more coverage has usually not meant better coverage, he added.

This has, once again, forced the MCT to immediately respond and remind reporters and editors of the necessity of adhering to ethical reportage.

In particular, the monitored reporting style, Mireny said, has directly violated the Code of Ethics for Media Professionals in Tanzania. On page 25, sub-section 1.9 regarding reporting victims of sexual offences, journalists are directed to “avoid identifying victims of sexual assaults”.

Mireny said that prejudiced and insensitive reporting is like ‘second rape’, causing the victim to feel violated all over again.

”The press wields a lot of power, owing to its wide reach. But through irresponsible reporting, it condemns to permanent stigmatisation even those who are victims of such inhumane acts, making them suffer double tragedy”, he said.

While it is necessary to expose such inhumane acts, professional ethics hold that it is important to minimise the harm by not identifying rape victims, he added.
Rape is coerced sex, a crime, and only perpetrators can be held responsible for the crimes they commit – not victims. Naming and shaming should be of perpetrators, not victims.

Reporting of a heinous crime like rape and sodomy in mainstream media does not have to be voyeuristic, insensitive, sensational, speculative and thus unethical, he cautioned.

These are some of the practice in journalism that has been painting badly the professional and now must be addressed to stop them so that Tanzania journalism become more responsible and respected.