It is good news that the Government has allowed The
Monitor empire to resume. There is no need for Government to continue
soiling its neat suit, digging the grave of a paper which appears to be
heading to the grave yard on its own accord unless it rethinks its
strategy.
The Monitor's circulation is between 5,000 and 7,500
copies behind Bukedde's sales, making it the miserable third player after
The New Vision (number one) and Bukedde (number two). Already,
advertisers, worried of being associated with a paper which has become the
leading public relations company for the Kony terrorists, are distancing
themselves from The Monitor.
Indeed, the number of advertisers
booking space for independence messages in The Monitor were a quarter of
what was given to The New Vision, yet five years ago, the two papers used
to get the same volume of business. Only a few die-hard UPCists in key
Government positions still feed The Monitor, in the misguided belief that
no one in Government is taking note of their mischievous behaviour of
feeding an institution which is doing nothing but biting the hand that
feeds it. If "Monitor II" wants to succeed where "Monitor I" failed, it
will have to take note of the following three lessons:
Lesson One:
Once it reopens, The Monitor will find itself at the cross roads of yellow
woods. It will not decide easily which way to go. It cannot continue doing
public relations for the terrorists and expect Ugandans and the Government
to take their treasonable acts with hands down. And this is not
debateable. Once a country is at war, the media must follow suit. It must
be pro-government. It is historical. It is a fact and it is not
negotiable, whether the war is popular or not.
More than a hundred
years ago, in 1898, in the USA, a survey of 65 leading Republican papers
by a magazine called Public Opinion found that 43 percent supported
colonizing the Philippines in 1898. Another study by New York Herald
polled 498 newspapers on the subject of expansionism and found that 61.3
percent of them supported expansionism. By 1900, another New York Herald
poll of 241 Republican papers found that 84.2 percent supported American
policy of expansionism, which as every one knows, was carried out largely
by actions of war.
At the height of Iranian uprising against the
Shah, who was a stooge of the west, The Economist of December 12, 1978 was
more sadist. It lamented that "while in Iran blood was flowing, the Iran's
oil was not."
Lesson Two: The Monitor has created a false impression in
the public that it is the only "INDEPENDENT PAPER". The rhetoric sends the
false impression that The Monitor is independent from the State. This is
childish and unscientific. Historically, communication was always, and
continues to be, class communication. When the workers lost grip of the
political economy of Britain and the capitalist class emerged with
industrial revolution, The Economist was born in 1848, to give guidance to
the victorious capitalist class, with a humble production of only 3,500
copies. Since then, British capitalism has consolidated, and so has The
Economist, which now prints more than 500,000 copies a week. On the other
hand, the historical papers like the Renolds which supported workers,
failed to take off, basically because communism failed to take root in
Britain as well. The newspaper industry grows in harmony with the rest of
the economy and in line with the capitalist laws. There is no newspaper
that grows as an independent island. Newspapers in the capitalist world
grew and consolidated as their capitalist countries consolidated as well.
There has always been a harmonious relationship between the capitalist
ruling class and the capitalist-driven newspapers. This is a lesson The
Monitor should learn.
Lesson Three: Government-press relationship in 1945, when
the American press had not become as strong as it is now, USA Army
Transport Command Planes flew the members of the American Society of
Editors to 22 major cities and eleven friendly countries to help explain
the need for international support for international free press, which, as
we now know, mean international pro-American press. More than 50 years
since the American government nurtured its editors, the harmorous
relationship between the media in the west is so consolidated so much so
that it is believed that three out of five top editors in the west work
for state intelligence services. Indeed, for societies which have studied
the west so much through their many years of contacts, like the Arabs and
the people in Asia, there is no difference between a western journalist
and intelligence officials. That is why American and European journalists
are targeted as state spies. There has never been a truly "independent
paper", because there is nothing like being independent, without adequate
financial backing. And since Government is the largest spender on
advertisements, it is therefore laughable for The Monitor to mislead the
public that it is independed from Government, when 80 percent of The
Monitor's income is from Government advertisements. The chief advertiser
is indirectly the main controller of the editorial policy of any news
media. This is not debatable. The Monitor's book section is based on
Ministry of Education's orders. In Europe and in USA, where the
Governments are controlled by monopolistic giant companies, the media is
controlled by these giant monopolistic companies as well. The leading
newspapers are part of the larger consolidated chain of different giant
businesses, which means that newspapers are mindful of their masters. In
this case, different companies which are part of the consolidated chain.
In the USA for example, since 1945, the number of newspaper ownership with
between two dailies and 80 dailies has increased from 60 to now nearly
200, while the number of chain owned dailies has increased from 153 in
1923 to 1,061 by 1976 to nearly 1,500 as of now. Chain ownership accounts
for more than 60 percent of the 2,000 dailies in the USA. Leading media
houses in the USA are part of the larger conglomeration. The UPI (United
Press International) had shares in Coca-Cola, while Reuters gets more
money selling stock exchange information. The USA influence in the media
around the world does not come cheap. USA accounts for more than 60
percent of the world expenditure on advertisements compared to say one
percent for Africa. Clearly, there is nothing like The Monitor being the
ONLY INDEPENDENT news paper, and there is nothing like The Monitor being
INDEPENDENT of Government.
Lesson Four: The Monitor has succeeded because of
government investments. The most irritating part of The Monitor is their
failure to appreciate the fact that the growth of the media in any country
follows in the steps of how the Government manages the larger national
economy and strategy. By 1943, America saw itself as the country most
suited to take over the leadership of a world that was besieged and torn
by wars. But in terms of information, Britain, which had invested heavily
in oceanic cables, still controlled the flow of news. The Americans,
desperate to dislodge the British from monopolising the flow of
information, used two fronts. They capitalised on the need to have the
free flow of information in order to get access to British colonies. The
American argued that by monopolising the flow of information Britain was
presenting slanted news in their favour, without fear of any
contradiction. But the most important strategy is that patriotic USA
companies subside with the support of USA government, spent ten years
collecting funds and succeeded in developing the satellite communication
system which ended the British oceanic monopoly and revolutionarised
communication to date. Excited by the plan, William Benton, then USA's
Assistant Secretary of State, in January 1946, announced that "USA planned
to do every thing within its powers to help break down the artificial
barriers to the expansion of American news". It is even alleged that the
seed money that started the mighty CNN was provided by the CIA. Translated
into our local affairs, The Monitor has been able to grow because
Government has invested in infrastructure and allowed MTN to
revolutionarise communication, so that Kony, is now able to dictate what
he wants to appear on the front page of The Monitor. The Monitor comes out
because there is steady power supply, security for every one and goods
roads that enable people to transport their food stuffs from up country
for sale in Kampala, etc. I hope with these few words of wisdom, The
Monitor will, once it resumes, take hard lessons and rethink its
unrealistic position.
