HAS PRINT MEDIA BECOME ANEMIC?

Sir,

Are we being used to pull the trigger and fire the deadliest shot on government or  are we ‘rightly’ given a platform to exercise our trampled upon freedom of expression and speech?  People like to excoriate without concrete evidence so I hope the word doing the round in the social media is just empirical.

Guess our bullets should be assayed before we fire indiscrimately! Unfortunately, bottled emotions have the nerve of distending the latent fighting spirit on the wrong target!

But if the assertion that the Times of Eswatini is using the marginalised and aggrieved populace and putting them in the firing squad line with its 400-500 words challenge as to protect its image and business from the powers that be are true, as a nation we ‘are’ doomed and given sugar coated weevil tablets as we ‘are’ betrayed by our ‘only’ vessel of plight and suffering.

No wonder the corrupt are clicking champagne-filled glasses in government offices without any fear as they know they will never be exposed one bit.
Truly speaking, the paper could find a guilty ant in a colony but their investigative glasses are now smoke-filled and so ‘blurry’ that the corrupt and unfaithful are running amok around our taxes and hearts.

I wonder if it is a circle of friends looking out for each other’s back as the Times systemically self-censored itself to give rise to corrupt practices and social decay in our society.

 The media plays a big role in instilling good values in our society as it influences our behavioural attitudes, patterns and opinions so when its ammunition becomes anaemic and fizzles and its ink looks fainter, the corrupt go berserk and party stark naked publicly, unashamedly.

Feasting

One word out ‘ngalamagundvwane’, hastily corrupt committees/commissions are set up to fool the general public as those found to be feasting on government funds diplomatically set scot-free and the commission findings end up collecting dust in corrupt offices, under lock and key or mysteriously shredded.

Analytically, the Anti Corruption Unit has unfortunately proven that it was a chained bull dog and now has been turned into another ‘Belly Restoration Committee’ as corruption is rearing its ugly head in our midst especially in government offices and powerful class ‘openly’.

Even when the paper exposes some of the malpractises or those responsible, nothing is done nor is anyone being arrested. Corruption isn’t complicated like they want us to believe, only they don’t want us to know who are siphoning and embezzling the public funds.

How can large sums of money be ‘stolen’ nje in broad daylight yet nobody is arrested yet there is bound to be a paper trail?
If the print media distort the truth to protect those in power, dictatorship and uneven distribution of wealth ‘fester’ unabated to an extent some end up feeling omnipotent.

Did money and business change the sting of their pens, we wonder? In these times, it’s only a day old baby that can be verisimilitude but I still do believe in the media!  But alas people are up in arms and somehow believe the stories are now so blurry and so weak.
Seriously, I wonder when we buy the paper/magazine, are we looking for the spine-chilling, maccabre, character assassinating stories or the positive, educational, business-minded, community uplifting stories? 

Stories speaking about the weather and climate change, seriously do not sell papers even though they are chief to our livelihood and way of life but it is the  mind blowing senseless immoral stories that do!

Some systems of governance deliberately impoverish the populace in order to cling on power by throwing lousy bones at the hungry and marginalised majority.
In that kind of set-up, the print media is our only medium of freedom and expression but alas the red tape is a Mona Lisa lipstick stuck on the nibs like super strength glue!

Umtukulu

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