Bibliografía general

In this section of this chapter I make conclusions basing on the above findings. While making this analysis, I will compare opinions from the people I interviewed with findings from text analysis.

From the onset, the first impression I got on hearing from interviewees and making text analysis was that reporting corruption in Uganda was a very challenging task. The challenge mainly stems from inadequate resources, lack of enabling laws and institutional constraints embedded within and out of the media organizations. Both newspapers made an effort to demonstrate that they hold exposing corruption as part of their mandate. But the fact that a UK newspaper in Financial Times reported corruption in Uganda faster than the local newspapers is evidence of low investigative capacity among the Uganda media and the poor news reporting environment. Because of this same environment, not even the correspondents of the foreign media can help to fill in the gap left by the local media. For example, Joshua Mmali, a BBC correspondent in Kampala told me in a separate interview that most of their reports are based on what is reported in the local media. He says that they are more afraid to report on sensitive issues or stories which do not originate from official sources like the government because litigants prefer to sue rich media like BBC, even if the same story was carried by a local media.

The Global Fund corruption scandal is probably one of the few subjects to ever receive such publicity in both government and privately owned media. Despite the differences in the number of stories, I observed that both papers gave this topic a lot of prominence.

As the news editor of Daily Monitor explained, the prominence was mainly pushed by the commercial considerations this story offered. The media in Uganda, like elsewhere in the world is currently market-driven. This means that whereas the Global Fund corruption scandal story was widely reported as a matter of civic importance, it was also extensively

reported because of the high sales it brought as a result of an overwhelming public interest.

Based on the way this story was initialized, the media in Uganda lack capacity to conduct their own investigation in matters of public importance. This means that the Ugandan media is less proactive. Although journalists and editors at the government newspaper reported that they receive enough facilitation to investigate stories, such support is bound to yield little results due to the bureaucratic system of accessing information in Uganda and limited training and experience among journalists. As I mentioned in the introduction, media houses are faced with a challenge of maintaining experienced journalists because they cannot offer market labour prices at times. Like I explained in the state of the media in Uganda today, a total of four groups of experienced journalists have broken away from Daily Monitor to form their own newspapers in the last 12 years.

Two publications are still functioning while the remaining two have closed. This means that journalism has lost the contribution of journalists whose publications did not succeed on the market. Most of such journalists have become government employees or joined non-governmental organizations.

The other problem I noticed was lack of follow-up on some developing stories. Follow-ups are important because they help the media to keep tabs on an issue something that can create pressure on wrong doers. For instance a couple of days before the Global Fund officially announced that it had suspended aid to Uganda, Daily Monitor had reported that Uganda had lost $28 million worth of malaria drugs due to ineptitude in the ministry of health procurement process. This story was closely related to the Global Fund story because malaria is part of the components supported by Global fund. If the paper followed up on this story, they should have broken the Global Fund scandal before the official announcement.

In terms of ownership, I found that the most important issue is to ensure editorial independence regardless of whether the owner is government or private. As long as the

owner has an opportunity to interfere with editorial content, the media’s performance as a society watchdog will be stifled. One proposal I want to support is the encouragement of small and medium-sized media organizations competing in the market place.

Proliferated and pluralistic media will provide the necessary checks against unscrupulous owners who may want to interfere with content. In terms of regulation, there should be encouragement of more media owners and limitation of conglomeration in Uganda’s media ownership structures.

There is a strong need to come up with a legal framework that is aimed at safeguarding editorial independence in Uganda. Laws that ensure that editors and journalists exercise their rights without interference from the ownership will go a long way in promoting editorial independence. Another proposal for promoting editorial independence relates to developing a common code of conduct between media owners and journalists. This code of conduct should clearly state the roles and responsibilities of both journalists and media owners. In this code, indirect methods of stifling editorial independence like allocating a small budget to the editorial and interfering with appointment of personnel in the editorial department should resisted.

In regard to ethics for reporting on corruption, journalists in Uganda need to improve on the level of commitment towards their job, especially in respect with reporting on corruption. The media cannot afford to fight corruption when it is corrupt in itself. The reported taking of bribes and patronage within the media is likely to discredit the media as a tool of combating corruption. Media owners need to support their journalists by paying them a fair but sustainable salary in order to minimize chances of being compromised.

In summary, the way government and private media in Uganda report on corruption can be described as reactive. Due to lack of financial resources, manpower with investigative skills and the poor legal framework in addition to the uncooperative members of the public, the media in Uganda cannot afford to conduct its own investigations into matters of public interest. In terms of ownership, evidence from both interviews and content

analysis have showed that like privately owned media, government media can also report about corruption independently if given the necessary editorial safeguards.

4.7.1 Post script to the Global Fund corruption scandal

Following the lifting of the suspension the Global Fund had put on Uganda’s grants, the Global Fund appointed a caretaker management firm, Ernst & Young to evaluate the quality and efficacy of all sub-recipients of grants; and a restructuring process of the grants to streamline implementation, clarify responsibilities, and simplify grant oversight.

Ernst & Young replaced the Project Management Unit that supervised the implementation of Global Fund activities prior to the suspension. The former Coordinator of the Project Management Unit Dr. Tiberius Muhebwa and other top managers together with the three former Ministers of Health are awaiting prosecution on the recommendations of the commission of inquiry into the mismanagement of the Global Fund. The three ministers were also dropped from the Cabinet after the February 2006 Presidential elections.

The public is however running out of patience in regard to the fate of the above suspects. Since 2005, the government has been reluctant to prosecute these suspects. In April 2007, the government produced a White Paper on the Global Fund commission of inquiry report recommending that the three former ministers and other managers implicated in the scandal to be further investigated by the Police. Since then, no further action has been taken. According to Daily Monitor, in December 2007, the Director of Public Prosecution was reported saying that they could not prosecute Global Fund suspects due to lack of funds. Meanwhile, several individuals and organizations have been paying back some of the money they had stolen from the Global Fund projects in Uganda. New Vision of October 13 2007 reported that about $400,000 had so far been recovered. The recovery of the money is in accordance with the commission of inquiry recommendation that at least 300 agencies should refund the Global Fund money they mismanaged.