Journalists should be brave - Ochora
By Odokonyero Moses
Feb 20, 2004
GULU - The LC-V chairman here, Lt. Col. Walter Ochora, has advised journalists to take "calculated risks" in order to get "good" stories.He was closing a two-day radio production workshop for 30 journalists based in northern Uganda on February 18."Journalists love writing about Kony, but how many of you have ever attempted to interview him?
Somebody just sits on a veranda and writes that a chopper has crashed, why don't you go there to verify?" he said.Ochora urged media bosses to train their staff in tandem with technological developments in a bid to improve on the quality of their work.
The country representative of workshop sponsors Konrad Adenaur Foundation, Mr Wolfang Hilberer, exalted the judiciary for its recent striking down of the publication of false news."
Ugandans now have a higher measure of freedom but this calls for an equally high measure of responsibility among the journalists," he said. The course attracted 30 journalists from Gulu, Kitgum, Lira, Apac and Pader.
� 2004 The Monitor Publications
""Journalists love writing about Kony, but how many of you have ever attempted to interview him?" so says Walter Ochora.
If I had a chance I would put the following question to Walter Ochora: MR. LC-V Chairman, given the fact the NRM dictatorship ( which you are part off) recently accused some Ugandan Journalist of being "rebel" collaborators and or sympathizers for allegedly possessing telephone number of LRA commanders, how then can members of the Uganda Journalist community, feel comfortable enough to try to interview KONY himself? won't the NRM dictatorship accuse the journalist of being "rebel collaborators"s if some of this rebels as much as attempt to establish contact with KONY "REBELS"?
Matek
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
