By Kebeli Demba Nyima,
Atlanta, USA
Press dinners were never conceived as social galas. They were born out of tension, suspicion, and mutual necessity between power and those paid to scrutinise it. In both Washington and London, the tradition emerged not to flatter governments but to manage an unavoidable proximity while preserving professional distance. The tragedy of the Gambian press dinner is not that it exists, but that it has been stripped of its original meaning and converted into an annual exercise in self-trivialisation.
The American tradition came first. In Washington, early twentieth-century presidents attempted to control the flow of information by favouring some reporters and freezing out others. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson reportedly considered ending formal presidential press conferences altogether after being angered by leaked remarks attributed to him. The threat alarmed reporters who covered the White House. They understood that access to the presidency was not a courtesy but a democratic necessity. In response, journalists banded together to protect their collective access and independence. This led to the formal establishment of the White House Correspondents’ Association in 1914 and, several years later, to the creation of an annual dinner as a symbolic and strategic gesture: a way to maintain a professional relationship with the presidency without surrendering editorial autonomy.
In other words, the dinner that later became the White House Correspondents’ event was originally a practical gathering, a declaration that the press would engage the presidency as an institution, not as individual supplicants. It was never intended as an award night for obedience. Even when it later drifted into spectacle, the underlying rule remained clear: jokes at night, subpoenas and investigations by morning.
London’s version was harder, colder, and far less sentimental. Fleet Street was not a place but a culture, built on rivalry, aggression, and an unspoken contempt for power. Editors met politicians not to admire them, but to size them up. Any dinner between press and state existed alongside a brutal news cycle that could destroy reputations within hours. There was no illusion that a shared table softened editorial independence. If anything, it sharpened it. A politician who mistook civility for loyalty usually learned otherwise on the next day’s front page.
In both societies, the dinner was incidental. The work happened elsewhere.
The Gambian adaptation inverts this logic. Here, the dinner has become the work. Each year, media proprietors, editors, and senior managers descend on the event with visible enthusiasm.One would expect that, nearly a decade after the fall of dictatorship, such gatherings would be used to extract concrete reforms. One would expect the repeal of repressive media laws, the opening of the broadcasting space, and a transparent licensing regime. None of this has happened. For nearly three years, no serious investor has been able to obtain a broadcasting licence through open and lawful means. Applications stagnate. Files are held by officials who promise access rather than process. Licences, when they appear, emerge through informal channels known to everyone and spoken of by no one.
These are the matters that once defined press–power engagements in Washington and London. In The Gambia, they barely trouble the evening’s agenda. Last year, the conversation drifted instead toward government subventions and advertising, a revealing preoccupation. Dependence was discussed openly; independence was treated as abstract. When anti-media laws were mentioned at all, they were acknowledged politely and then buried. A full year later, nothing has changed.
The presidency benefits enormously from this arrangement. President Adama Barrow has perfected a style of democratic speech in which everything sounds promising and nothing is binding. Reform is always underway, progress is always imminent, and responsibility is permanently deferred. Promises are offered freely because no one present expects them to harden into policy. The dinner supplies the optics of engagement without the inconvenience of delivery. It is governance by reassurance, conducted in a language so gentle it never risks enforcement.
Most telling is who the dinner is really for. In Washington and Fleet Street traditions, the foot soldiers of journalism mattered. Reporters who covered courts, corruption, and conflict were central to the profession’s authority. In The Gambia, they are largely sidelined. The tables belong to executives and proprietors, men and women who appear to believe that journalism is validated by proximity to power rather than distance from it. Each year, almost the same faces reappear, as though the profession were a closed club rather than a living institution, and as though repetition itself were proof of merit.
A serious media sector would remember its own history. Press dinners were never meant to pacify the press or legitimise delay. They were a pause in hostilities, not a surrender. Although press dinners are light social events, light does not mean empty, and social does not mean spineless.
What is missing in The Gambia is self-respect. If journalists truly believe that the government is not serious about media reform, they have options. They can boycott the dinner. Or they can attend and use moments of direct access to say calmly and clearly what the media wants and what it will no longer tolerate. When a journalist sits next to the President, that moment is not a favour. It is leverage. Wasting it on politeness and small talk reflects a failure of judgment and a lack of professional seriousness.
A serious media sector applies pressure. It does not complain today and relax tomorrow. It does not shout about minor inconveniences and fall silent on major blockages. In The Gambia, people protest PURA data charges loudly, yet say very little when the government freezes investment in the broadcasting sector. That freeze affects jobs, growth, competition, and press freedom. The silence around it exposes a lack of seriousness. It is easier to protest what irritates daily life than what threatens long-term power.
That contradiction runs through the press dinner as well. The event is not useless because it is friendly. It is useless because nothing follows it. No timelines. No commitments. No consequences. Each year ends the same way it begins. Smiles are exchanged. Photographs are taken. Policies remain untouched.
One fact should nonetheless be stated plainly. President Adama Barrow is reported to be allocating land to the Gambia Press Union for the construction of its own premises. This is a concrete gesture and deserves acknowledgment. Institutional infrastructure matters.
But it must not distract. Land is not reform. Buildings do not protect press freedom. A media sector that celebrates gifts while ignoring laws, licences, and regulation is bargaining short-term comfort for long-term weakness. Independence cannot be built on favours.
The rule has never changed. When the press grows comfortable receiving benefits from government, its voice softens. When it depends on goodwill, it loses edge.
And that, more than any dinner or speech, is the real danger facing Gambian journalism today.
