By Amin Kef Sesay
In upholding the people’s right to freedom of speech, and the right to hold those in authority accountable, in Sierra Leone for a long time journalists have been a threatened species. Even the recent elimination of libel law from the law books does not offer journalists protection from the whims and caprices of powerful interests in the society – hence the need to stick together and to back each other at all times.
With journalists open to censure and punishment by the IMC and the litigation in the courts of law, it is only proper that journalists instead of being at each other’s throat should be each other’s keepers.
When journalists are divided, it makes it very easy for those that have vested interests to divide and rule us to succeed.
We smile and laugh to each other, but deep down, among the journalistic family runs bad blood. Some journalists for one reason or the other feel no warmth for each other.
There seems to be two rival journalist unions, each affiliated with a different political party; one fighting for the truth, the other bent on using the profession to enrich themselves.
Journalists should be united as one to fight back against threats and repression and the powerful forces of society that would want to use them to further their selfish ambitions at the detriment of the society.
What we journalists should always keep at the front of our minds is that we are all in this together. If we don’t support each other, if we don’t defend each other against attacks, we make all journalists more vulnerable to the politicians who would silence dissent and shut down investigative reporting.
Solidarity, however, does not mean we cannot hold differing opinions or deferring editorial points of view on national issues; as long as they are genuinely held and shared without malice or intent to set one segment of society against the other set the society ablaze.
