Tanzania: Press Freedom Worsening in Tanzania, New Report Reveals

 

 President John Magufuli. Photo: State House/Daily News

Dar es Salaam — It is not all rosy for the Fourth Estate in Tanzania due to threats against journalists and repressive media laws, the Freedom House has said in its new survey.

The Freedom of the Press 2017 report ranks Tanzania as partly free, with the score of 58, a decline of 3 points from the previous rank, all attributed to restrictive legislation, including the Cybercrime Act and the Media Services Act, and the resulting prosecution and imprisonment of journalists and bloggers.

"The new Tanzanian President John Magufuli pursued a popular campaign to wipe out corruption, but his government also showed a worrying intolerance for criticism in the press and social media, including by launching defamation prosecutions under the 2015 Cybercrimes Act and passing a problematic Media Services Act," the report reads in part, adding that at least 10 people have been charged with insulting the President under the Cybercrimes Act by the end of 2016.

The report further says that the police, seeking information on similar online comments, also arrested and charged Maxence Melo, the cofounder of Jamii Forums, a popular online discussion portal often used to expose graft and controversial issues, among other things.

Freedom House's rankings come a few days after another survey conducted by the Reporters Without Borders found out that Tanzania has slipped 12 places in freedom of the press due to similar reasons.

In Africa, Tanzania shared the 24th position with Uganda and Kenya. Rwanda and Burundi were in the 41st and 45th positions respectively. Globally Tanzania was in the 122nd position out of 198 countries that were surveyed.

Norway was ranked as the country where the media was most free in the world, followed by the Netherlands and Sweden. The world's most media repressive state was North Korea. Other countries and territories that were most poorly rated include Azerbaijan, Crimea, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Syria, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Globally, press freedom declined to its lowest point in 13 years in 2016 due to unprecedented threats to journalists and media outlets in major democracies, intensified crackdowns by authoritarian states, and moves by Russia and China to increase their influence beyond their borders, according to Freedom of the Press 2017.

"Political leaders and other partisan forces in many democracies--including the United States, Poland, the Philippines, and South Africa--attacked the credibility of independent media and fact-based journalism, rejecting the traditional watchdog role of the press in free societies," Jennifer Dunham, director of research for Freedom of the Press said in a press statement.

The report said that only about 13 per cent of the world's population enjoys a free press as they live in a media environment where coverage of political news is robust, the safety of journalists is guaranteed, state intrusion in media affairs is minimal, and the press is not subject to onerous legal or economic pressures.

"Forty-two per cent of the world's population has a partly free press. Forty-five per cent live in countries where the media environment is not Free," the reports reads in part.