The National President of the Cameroon Association of English-Speaking Journalists, CAMASEJ, has hinted plans to carryout in-house cleansing of its members in order to evict quacks and charlatans dragging the noble profession to the mud as well as set up a disciplinary committee to check the professional conduct of members.
Viban Jude gave the hints Tuesday 4 April 2021 during a live TV interview on the CRTV midday bilingual newscast during which issues affecting the life of the association, journalists, the state of press freedom in the country among many others were discussed.
His outing comes barely a week after delegates from CAMASEJ chapters met in Limbe to discuss steps that need to be taken to improve on association’s constitution in order to make it stronger and more vibrant.
“We are going to streamline our membership. In one of our resolutions, we said if you are not trained as a journalist, you will have to practice in a house that is recognised for five years and if you want to be a member, your letter of application has to be sponsored by two renowned journalists,” Viban revealed. The move he explained will make entry difficult.
“We want to clean the house so that we deserve a better reputation…we believe that if at CAMASEJ, we have the quality and we are able to demonstrate that this is the quality we have out there, the charlatans will find their way at the backdoor,” he stated.
With a plethora of new challenges affecting the media landscape, Viban, said the body envisages to upgrade the skills members, put in a team of legal advisers to handle troubles involving members especially with the crisis in the North West and South West regions as well as look at other areas where the amended constitution could be used to fix things especially those brought about by elections.
Viban said with a seeming rise in bad professional conduct, the body looks forward to putting in place a disciplinary committee to check and punished those found wanting.
Quizzed on how free the press is in the country, Viban said pluralism in the media landscape has made the issue of freedom relative. He however said based on the theme of this year’s World Press Freedom Day – “Information as a Public Good” –which government hasn’t endorsed, makes access to basic and correct information very difficult.
“What we are clamouring for is a freedom of information act, where it is obligatory for state functionaries and offices to be able to give us information. When we don’t have correct information that we can be able to verify, we relay incomplete information and the public depends on us to be able to make choices with this information,” Viban said.
Reacting to questions relating to the situation of poor payment journalists, the National President said the association can only do advocacy in ensuring just anybody doesn’t get up from anywhere to become a media owner without susficcient resources for sustainability.
“We have people who have media houses without location, people have newspapers in their suitcases. We think government should ensure someone is financially apt before he takes on a business of collecting and marketing news…we also think that adverts should be democratized in the sense that you don’t give adverts only to state-owned organs. The private media should have that privileged too so that they can pay their staff,” he added.
On issues relating to media aid from government, Viban said the media landscape has gone passed the level of asking for government aid but for subvention. “We are clamouring for more of subvention than aid. The entire aid cannot even run a single media house for instance,” he revealed.
Empowering the media with subvention from government to the CAMASEJ President it is for the good of Cameroon’s democracy. “…the more we have a free and independent press, the more our democracy and the image of the country will be respected and shone worldwide,” Viban stated.
By Doh Bertrand Nua in Yaounde
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