Media Coverage Of Parliament

EDITORIAL

The Speaker of the House of Representatives Parliament and his two assistants in the job argue that the Somaliland media hasn’t been covering the parliament adequately. They especially claim that there has been no regular coverage of the activities of the House Select Committees in the print press.

The complaints may be justified when the significantly reduced media coverage of the parliament in the last 2 months is taken into consideration. However it would be unfair to generalize and say that all media sectors or all individual media outlets behaved equally the same in the way they have treated parliamentary news.

For instance the government media gave far less coverage to the parliament than the private press. In fact the day Speaker Erro was criticizing the media for not paying attention to the various activities conducted by the parliament, the daily Somali language Haatuf carried a news item on a report submitted by the House Select Committee on Foreign Relations. A report on the controversial procurement of 3 Land Cruizer vehicles also appeared in that same Haatuf issue. But the media coverage of the parliament can and should be improved significantly.

Somaliland’s lower House of parliament is such an important institution for the maintenance and further development of democracy in this country that the media can not afford to ignore it as a news-maker. The Somaliland electorate needs to be informed frequently about what its representatives have been doing while parliamentarians must follow whatever has been happening in their constituencies. The Somaliland media is therefore obliged to contribute to this process by keeping the public adequately informed on the range of debates and activities going on in parliament.

But for the media to play such a role effectively, Erro and his colleagues must first try to understand the circumstances under which media institutions and people operate. Particularly, they shouldn’t take the smooth functioning of the independent press for granted as Mr. Samale did on last Saturday when he instructed his staff to unsubscribe any newspaper that fails to be delivered to his office by 8:30 a.m.

Due to technical related printing constraints no independent publication will be able to meet such a deadline on regular basis and we are afraid that representative Samale might soon find himself left with the only option of reading the government owned Maandeeq everyday.

To fulfill their respective duties the media and the Parliament need to improve their relations to an extent that recognizes the value of the former’s independence. The Parliament must also realize that it has to develop the necessary skills to make itself attractive and interesting enough to gain media attention. The press can not be expected to improve its coverage of Parliament as long as most of the proceedings of select-committees remained closed to journalists and House leaders behaved secretively or manipulatively.

The Somaliland public, together with the independent press will be watching closely how this opposition-led lower House scrutinizes the bill on the budget. It will be an opportunity for the legislators to prove themselves as worthy of media attention or inattention.

Finally, it has to be understood that there will be no harm in the tendency of the media to maintain a degree of suspicion in the relationship with political institutions such as the parliament.

Source: Somaliland Times

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