Media Ombudsman to support journalists during elections
• By Allexer Namundjembo
Media Ombudsman Jonh Nakuta said his office is ready to assist media personnel during election time.
Journalists in many countries used to be intimidated and abused by politicians, and Nakuta said his office is ready to assist journalists and media members during elections.
“The office of the ombudsman is starting a Media Monitoring Project, a very first of its kind for Namibia, which officially started on the first of July and at the end of the month, we will release the first report of the project, one of six monthly report that we will be producing in terms of how the media have been reporting on the elections in terms of fairness, professional reporting and neutrality,” Nakuta said.
He added that his office would have a student research assistant handling media complaint and all elections-related complaints that the media ombudsman would receive.
“This will be one way of how we will be trying to see whether journalists are living up to the standards of reporting, which includes accurate reporting, neutrality and so forth”, he said.
Nakuta said in the history that Namibian journalists have not experienced violence during election times, and he believes that the same will continue. He said that compared to other African countries and the world, politicians have abused journalists in different countries and no news accessibility, which is different in Namibia.
“One thing we can be proud of as Namibians is that journalists generally do not suffer the kind of threats and attacks that other journalists in another part of the world receive during elections.
“ Of course, sometimes politicians are not so happy with the way in which journalists are reporting on them and we are not receiving any complains of that nature for the last 6 years that I am in office, I haven’t received any complaints of a journalist attacked by any politicians” Nakuta added.
He added that his office is thanking politicians for their media tolerance and for respecting journalist rights.
“We are thanking politicians for not interfering in journalists’ works. Journalists have been reporting without any fear of favour and without being intimidated by politicians, which placed our media freedom at a good standard. I am hoping that the same maturity will prevail in this year’s election,” he added.
Nakuta also expressed his disappointment towards the labour commissioner for not approving the Journalists union, NAMPU.
“The journalists union doesn’t fall in the jurisdiction of the media ombudsman; those are staff and labor related issues which are not in my jurisdiction. But obviously, as someone who is concerned and as a human rights practitioner and social justice advocate, I am aware of the struggles that NAMPU is having with the office of the labour commissioner,” he said.
Nakuta said he has been informed that the significant problems NAMPU is facing with the labour commissioner are mainly minor issues, such as grammatical and spelling errors, which are slowing the registration process.
“One can then ask if it is fair that the registration of a trade union, not just this of the media workers, is being delayed due to grammatical area and not something of substance. It is not something substantively reason that they are not registered but mare grammatical reasons,” he said.