Media Regulation in The Gambia: systemic changes needed to improve standards, professionalism and trust
By Sang Mendy
Under President Yahya Jammeh, who ran The Gambia from 1994-2017, authorities used the National Assembly to trample on the media for years.
Section 25 of The Gambia’s Constitution guarantees freedom of expression. Section 207 subsection 1 stipulates that “freedom and independence of the press and other information media are hereby guaranteed” while subsection 3 states that “the press and other information media shall at all times be free to uphold the principles, provisions and objectives of the Constitution, and the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people of The Gambia”. Section 37 provides for redress in the case of violation of Section 25.
But in a report published in 2007, global development and education organization IREX stated that these provisions of the constitution were strictly cosmetic and that, despite these guarantees, freedom of expression and the press were the most frequently violated rights in the country. Such provisions, the IREX report said, were easily eroded by Decree 77 and other provisions and acts brought in by the government, most especially the Newspaper Amendment Act of 2004 and the Criminal Code Amendment Act of the same year.
The Criminal Code Amendment Act made the publication of what the government termed “false information” an offense. It established stiff penalties for sedition, libel, and “false publication,” imposing a fine “of not less than D50,000 and not more than D250,000 [$2,500 to $13,000] or imprisonment for a term of not less than one year or both.” The government also put in place a Media Commission Bill, which empowered what IREX called a “kangaroo” commission to try and imprison journalists without any form of appeal.
Pressure on the media under the Jammeh regime also came in a series of extrajudicial attacks on journalists and media houses. On 16 December 2004, Deyda Hydara, the then editor and co-proprietor of The Point newspaper and a critic of the Jammeh government, was killed by gunmen said to be working for the government. In January 2022, a report on the Truth Reparations and Reconciliation Commission published by JUCTICEINFO.NET found that under Jammeh’s watch nearly 150 people seen as critics of the government were killed by people acting for the authorities. Newspaper offices – such as those of the bi-weekly newspaper, The Independent – were burnt down. These attacks had an adverse effect on standards and professionalism because they instilled fear among journalists.
Four years after Jammeh left power, the Gambia Press Union marked World Press Freedom Day in May 2021. Speaking at the event, President of the GPU Sheriff Bojang repeated previous calls for the government to repeal existing oppressive media laws including the Officials Secrets Act of 1922, the Criminal Code of 1933, the Newspaper and Broadcasting Stations Act of 1944 and the Telegraph Stations Act of 1990 and laws passed by the Jammeh regime such as the Indemnity Act of 2001, the GRTS Act of 2004 and the Information and Communications Act of 2009. “These laws were introduced specifically to limit media operations and critical voices,” he said. Bojang told the event that under the Jammeh regime, the country saw systematic closure of media houses, arrest, torture, illegal detention and enforced disappearance of journalists and numerous media workers went into exile for fear of prosecution.
A ‘super regulator’ with wide powers and responsibilities
While printed and online media are not regulated, regulation of broadcast media in The Gambia comes under the authority of the Public Utilities and Regulatory Authority (PURA), established in 2003 through the Public Utilities Authority Act of 2001. A so-called ‘super-regulator’, PURA has responsibility not only for the broadcast media but also a wide range of public services from water services to energy provider, and telecoms to transport operators too.
PURA’s Code of Conduct for Broadcasting governs standards of taste and decency, impartiality, neutrality, fairness and accuracy, maintenance of law and order, privacy, protection of rights especially those of children, and against violence. Standard B of the code, which addresses impartiality, neutrality and accuracy, states that when covering controversial issues of public importance, reasonable efforts should be made, or reasonable opportunities given, to present significant points of view, either in the same program or in other subsequent programs. The same standards state that accuracy is also at the heart of broadcasting (PURA, 2021).
The task to regulate all these areas – not just the broadcast media but the wider range of public services – is a mammoth one for the regulator’s 70-plus staff. In the United Kingdom, Ofcom is the regulator for the broadcast sectors, fixed and mobile telecoms, postal services and the airwaves over which wireless devices operate, and under a new bill seeking approval in parliament, Ofcom is acquiring responsibility to regulate online content, with powers to oversee how major online platforms regulate and moderate content on their platforms. To do this, Ofcom has a staff of close to 1,000, Ofcom Director of Broadcasting Standards Adam Baxter told our course.
I believe that each of those sectors regulated by PURA requires a lot of capacity, human and financial, to ensure an effective operation. The regulator is expected, for example, to have expertise however PURA does not have a specialized unit with media expertise looking into issues of licensing and or monitoring standards and professionalism. The task facing PURA is also greater than it used to be, due to a sharp rise in the number of media houses operating in the country since the change in government in 2017.
This rapid growth has outpaced the rise in the number of trained journalists, with resulting implications for standards, accuracy and professionalism. In 2010, the Gambia Press Union and Gambia Media Support, a Denmark-based media development organisation, piloted a two-year journalism training programme. In 2013, the GPU J-School now called Media Academy for Journalism and Communication, was accredited by The National Training Authority (NTA) to provide journalism education up to diploma level within the national Technical Vocational Education and Training scheme – a first for a country that had never had a formal structure for journalism education. Still too little training is available for the ever-growing media houses.
What has been and could be done
Overall, some limited progress has been made since the change of government in 2017 in liberalising the media regulation laws. In May 2018 the Supreme Court of The Gambia declared the law making defamation a criminal offence unconstitutional. However, the court failed to act against clauses in the criminal code on sedition and false news. This contravened a February 2018 ruling by the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that directed Gambia to immediately repeal laws on libel, sedition, and false news.
Progress in another area saw the enactment of the Access to Information Bill in 2021. The process was led by a National Coalition on Access to Information launched in 2018 and spearheaded by the Gambia Press Union (GPU). If fully implemented, the Bill should enable individuals to obtain information from public institutions – but whether this will happen in practice is another question.
Public interest media requires funding. One potential source is non-partisan international donors such as Open Society Institute for West Africa. Another is the sort of reader funding model developed by the Guardian in the UK and being tried out by a group of investigative journalists in Senegal. The International Fund for Public Interest Media, which is seeking to build financial support for media in this field, defines public interest media as a media that is free from censorship or control by and that exists to inform the public on the issues that shape their lives in ways which serve the public’s rather than any political, commercial or factional interest and holds those in power to account on behalf of the public interest.
Media houses especially broadcast stations should be involved in the continued production and dissemination of public interest reporting and address the challenges of disinformation by investing in factchecking and verification. For this to happen, the GPU must, through journalism training institutes, provide tailor-made courses for journalists and editors. The media must also create avenues and time for some forms of engagement with audiences and by partnering with other actors in the media ecosystem or civil society. This could be achieved by employing people skilled in interactive media. They should also monitor audience feedback, acknowledge their contributions and praise their feedback, be it positive or negative. The media should strive to increase audience reach and engagement, including those that seek to address the needs of underserved audiences and promote diversity in the newsroom and through coverage of under-reported issues and communities.
Though journalism education is at its embryonic state in The Gambia, the Media Academy for Journalism and Communication, which I manage, and the School of Journalism and Digital Media are producing trained journalists. But, for these trained journalists to be put to good work, the media houses must create room for diversity of voices, uphold ethical values as enshrined in the GPU Code of Conduct, be concerned about satisfying their audience, improve the way they operate and invest time in training their staff on specialized reporting, media laws and ethics, creativity, innovation and multimedia content production. For these to happen may require a change in funding models, as described above, with requirements on ethical journalism built in.
Equally, there is a need for a more thorough revamp of the media laws and the creation of an independent media regulatory body whose sole responsibility would be to focus on regulating the media and communication related areas as happens in countries represented on this course, such as Sierra Leone and Uganda, as well as in the United Kingdom. The regulator should comprise of mainly people from the media with keen interest in standards and professionalism serving as board members. The board should in turn employ people with knowledge and experience in media and communication related areas for proper delivery.
References
Domegni, Maxime Koami. (2022) How La Maison des Reporters Became Senegal’s First Reader-Funded Independent Media Site. https://gijn.org/2022/04/05/how-la-maison-des-reporters-became-senegals-first-reader-funded-independent-media-site/
Government of The Gambia, (1997) ‘Constitution of the Republic of The Gambia’. https://hrlibrary.umn.edu/research/gambia-constitution.pdf
G News for The Gambia. (2021) https://www.gambia.com/gpu-to-gambia-govt-repeal-draconian-media-laws-protect-journalists/
IREX. (2007) Report on media sustainability in The Gambia. https://www.irex.org/sites/default/files/pdf/media-sustainability-index-africa-2006-2007-the-gambia.pdf.pdf
JUSTICEINFO.NET, (2021) https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/86069-trrc-final-report-gambia-between-prosecutions-and-amnesties.html
Media Foundation for West Africa. (2003) https://www.mfwa.org/gambia-alert-arson-attack-on-newspaper/
PURA Code of Conduct. (2021) https://pura.gm/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Code_of_conduct_Guidelines_compressed.pdf
Viner, Katherine (2018). ‘The Guardian’s reader funding model is working. It’s inspiring.’
https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2018/nov/12/katharine-viner-guardian-million-reader-funding