Tanzania Blog Awards 2011: TMR Is a Contender

A couple of days ago I got an email telling me that The Mikocheni Report has been nominated for a 2011 Tanzania Blog Award in possibly two categories: best personal blog and best political blog. Excellent news to wake up to :)

I did ask a few questions when I got the email, just to get a feel of who is behind the initiative. Turns out that it is a reader-led project by a group of people who love the medium and want to boost blogging in Tanzania. A people's choice award, basically. Quite apart from the nomination, do check out the award website for the most comprehensive current blogroll I have seen in a long time, and please do look at the nominees in the various categories. There are a quite a few decent blogs out there and it will make your day better.

And sincerely: thank you to whoever nominated The Mikocheni Report. You have reminded me that just because the comments section is not on fire, it does not mean we aren't in the middle of a long conversation. I'll be putting the vote badges up later today, Tanesco permitting. High Five.

Media and Accountability: On to Social Media

Alright! We're now onto social media - the Big Three (FB, Twitter, blogs). Zitto Kabwe has just walked in and is on the mike about the role of social media in the North African revolts/revolutions. And moving right along to using social media: "I blog. I tweet. I would encourage other politicians to do the same."

Aaaaah, hapo amenikuna patamu as Makwaia wa Kuhenga would say. It has been very (veeeeeery) interesting watching the emergence of youth politics in the past five years concurrently with the rise of social media. It's a natural attraction: the young politicians are media savvy in a way that the old guard can't even begin to understand let alone compete with. But what are they doing with the awesome powers of social media?

Well- just like the old guard was able to manufacture and manipulate their contemporary media tools to suit them, so does the youth. One or two have been able to create social media mini-empires of their own that revolve around their political persona. Their public avatars, if you will. Great. Does this mean that these politicians are trustworthy and accountable in their use of this media? I don't think so. Non-professional socialmedia is the primordial soup of news- you gotta be very careful what you fish out of that pot. The same demons that haunt traditional media are there in socmed, and they move faster.

Does having a blog or a twitter account or a forum and "breaking news" or leaking documents or expressing your opinion make you a journalist? Should you be held to the same level of accountability as a professional? Or should that kick in when you Get Paid To Use Social Media? Or when you sell advertizing space? Is it okay if you are a politician, on the government payroll and using social media? Is it okay to claim to break news when you do it using Anonymous and refuse to reveal identity, sources or interests driving you?

Weigh in. I would love to hear from you about how you view social media and accountability. I'm afraid that the debate ended rather abruptly in the last five minutes as I was composing the blogpost but you can catch the stream of conversation on twitter at hashtag mediaforum.

Media and Accountability: The Debate Continues

"The government has a social contract with the people..." Richard Mgamba is going down a list of promises by the Kikwete regime and talking about accountability in terms of balance: do you focus on good stories or bad? At which point the moderator jumped in with this challenge: how does the media hold itself accountable?

Sure. But you know, I want to throw another spanner into the works here. How do consumers hold media accountable? I work in a very interactive form of media and I can tell you from experience that the level of responsiveness from the consumers is appalling. This might be because of the medium: not many people want to write, or type as it were. Radio and TV do better in this sense. But still: how many of us complain up one side and down the other about bad newspapers... and then go right back to buy the same paper the next day (voting by the wallet). How often have you, as a consumer, written in to a media house to give a piece of your mind about the quality of their product? Or do you think that accountability is manufactured in heaven like Manna?

Media ownership and accountability: whoooeeee! So this one participant pointed out that ownership is concentrated in a few hands, and this has consequences. One: some media owners don't care about the profession and create a working environment which forces journalists to resort to brown envelopes to make ends meet. Another: politicians during the election campaigns were known to strand journalists in the field if they did not write favorable articles. Okay, so it was a bit stronger than that, but at least he raised the specter of corruption. And then the kicker: as one earlier participant pointed out, its a social thing. Media is not an isolated sector, it just reflects the state of the society it operates in. What say you?

Media and Accountability: The Debate.

We're waiting for the Guest of Honor and a few other panelists to join the debate, but as time waits for no man the event is forging ahead. On the hotseats: Adam Simbeye (Host of This Week In Perspective- TBC One), Ichikaeli Maro (Editor- Daily News), Richard Mgamba (Editor- The Guardian, IPP Media).

Adam Simbeye challenged us to be focused in our definition of relationships of accountability and responsibility. First responsibility goes to the public, according to him. Ichikaeli Maro clarified that Daily News is NOT a government-owned newspaper, it is a publicly-owned newspaper and it's first job is to serve the interests of the Tanzanian public. Richard Mgamba was quite adamant about journalistic professionalism and responsibility: laxity, inaccuracy are not defensible!

Observation: before and leading up to the 2010 elections I was a massive fan of TBC, Habari Leo and Daily News. They seemed to be oases of reason in a sea of hysterical partisanship. Mind you, I did consume other media. However, after the elections there have been some serious crackdowns at TBC and an evident sea-change in the government's attitude towards free media. I am skeptical about Daily News' alleged independence from Establishment agendas. TBC is just tragic. But at least Habari Leo still has the crispest Kiswahili this side of Rai.

Highlight: Richard Mgamba also made note directly that the former head of TBC (allegedly, ahem) lost his job as a direct result of being accountable to the public rather than to the oligarchy. Word.

TMF Forum Liveblog: Observations from the SocMed Corner

Speeches. Very good ones, but I have sadly missed out on the names so you'll have to forgive me.

Looking around, there is a very interesting mix of people in this room- perhaps not what you might expect. There are: veteran journalists giving the benefit of their experience, a group of young turkeys in the corner tapping away and demanding that everybody retweet (yes, Shurufu, we're on it), a table of people who could only be donors, I spot the BBC World Trust, politicians, a couple of Kenyan accents and some lightscameraaction! going on. Very eclectic, and then again perhaps exactly what one would expect from this kind of gathering.

Multimedia has become such a part of our lives, but you should see the production that goes into getting content out. Between fighting over space for your adapter on the never-enough extensions that are provided, asking each other who that is on the microphone so we don't misspell their name, grasping the point of a rambling speaker so you can condense and write it up accurately? Si mchezo.