I thank the Gambia Press Union and indeed the media community for recognising me for the Press Freedom Hero Award 2024 at the GPU Journalism Awards on December 7.
In receiving this award, I am reminded of the value of freedom of the media and freedom of expression in the life of society, more so a society which underwent autocratic rule. For so long, the Gambian media has borne the brunt of tyrants, corrupt politicians, dishonest wealthy individuals and unscrupulous people in power for merely doing their job in exposing corruption, abuse of power and human rights violations.
To appreciate the role and value of the media is to remember the words of that famous English critic George Orwell when he said, “Freedom of the press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticise and oppose.” While it is important that individuals have the freedom and space to criticise and oppose, the role of the media is even more, which has been carved out in Section 207 of the Constitution that,
“The press and other information media shall at all times, be free to uphold the principles, provisions and objectives of this Constitution, and the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people of The Gambia.”
This is the role and function that journalists of The Gambia have played ever since. A few days before his assassination in 2004 by the death squad of the tin pot dictator Yahya Jammeh, the veteran journalist Deyda Hydara buttressed the same constitutional role of the media in an interview with the Independent newspaper: “… [T]he fundamental law of this land guarantees that we make sure that the government is accountable to the people for things it does in their name. Here again we didn’t draft the Constitution, which got inspiration from the covenants and other international laid down rules about freedom of expression. Meaning that even if the Constitution failed to empower us to do so we could rely on these instruments that The Gambia as a nation ratified.”
This comment by Deyda echoes the voice of the world American renowned journalist Joseph Pulitzer who said in 1909, after winning a criminal libel case brought on him by the corrupt American president Theodore Roosevelt and JP Morgan bank: “Our republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.”
Thus, in receiving this award I not only thank the GPU but more importantly I remind our journalists especially our young ones to remember the glorious history and responsibility of this noble profession. I urge them to realise that journalism is a service to humanity where one can either save or destroy a life or society by the work you do.
In that regard I urge journalists to always have the courage and conviction to stand for and by the truth, expose lies, abuse and corruption wherever and from whomever they come. I wish to remind them of another giant in the Gambian media, the late William Dixon Colley (1913 – 2001) who was a co-founder of the Gambia Press Union in 1978. Being a staunch defender of free press and against censorship, he once said, “If what one is saying is right and one strongly believes it is, one should go on saying it up to one’s grave”.
In conclusion, I leave these words of wisdom with our journalists from a BBC journalist Clive Myrie, in a speech delivered at the Society of Editors’ media freedom conference on 15 March 2022, that, “For the zealous and the powerful, press freedom is annoying, even dangerous. They are the true enemies of the people”.
This is to say to our journalists, do not be afraid but understand why people in power and governments seek to suppress, intimidate and assault the media and journalists. As always, I shall continue to stand with journalists and for freedom of the media and freedom of expression in the Gambia and beyond.
On this occasion, I hereby renew my 2014 ten-point World Press Freedom Resolution which has not been respected by the Gambia Government until today.
1. Bring the killers of Deyda Hydara and Omar Barrow to justice now;
2. Repeal all anti media laws such as newspaper amendment act, sedition laws, false publication, insult laws and giving false information to a public officer;
3. Investigate all arson and physical attacks against media houses and journalists now;
4. Decriminalise all media offences now;
5. Re-open all media houses now;
6. Compensate all media houses and journalists who are victims of arbitrary closure, arrests, detention, torture now;
7. Halt all acts of arbitrariness against the media immediately;
8. Protect and promote free speech and media freedom as soon as possible;
9. Provide tax concessions to media houses by January 2015;
10. Provide annual subvention to GPU from the national budget by January 2015.
