The Zogo Murder Case: Government’s Shallow Statement is a Slap in the Face of Media Freedom

EDITORIAL:

Cameroon is often celebrated as a country with media pluralism. There are hundreds of newspapers and radio stations, several TV stations and numerous websites but does that mean that they report freely and objectively? The answer is a resounding no.

The death last week of Martinez Zogo of Amplitude FM who was investigating a case of financial corruption, revealed that in Cameroon, journalists are still very far from really implementing the age-old journalistic slogan of speaking truth to power.

Zogo was a fearless journalist in a country where many journalists have been either intimidated and fled the country, or have even lost their lives as a result of their work. This should not be the case, especially if Cameroon’s already tainted image is to be cleansed on the international stage. Cameroon has consistently received low scores on the annual Press Freedom Index issued by Reporters Without Borders. Freedom of speech is a key barometer by which a country’s claim to democracy is evaluated and if all we can do as a nation is to brag that we have a plethora of media outlets, but then those media outlets are gagged and muzzled from speaking independently, then we really do not have any freedom of the press.

A South African scholar of journalism, Herman Wasserman, has even argued that “journalism is another name for democracy” and he is right. Cameroon is in dire need of journalism and government must play a key role in ensuring the safety of journalists.

We at Cameroon News Agency are disappointed with the carefully-worded statement government has issued. We find it rather appalling that government is stating the obvious and not addressing what led to Zogo’s death – which is the fact that he was investigating financial corruption linked to high profile business people in the country. We also are not sure if it was deliberate or just an oversight that the government statement made no mention of the fact that the brakes of Zogo’s wife’s car had been tampered with by unknown persons, which means that his life and that of his family had been in danger even before his ultimate demise, yet he was not protected by security and now when journalists converged at his residence to mourn him, there is suddenly abundant “security” there. The very fact that he was able to be abducted in front of a security station is very questionable to us.

To add salt to injury, security have been deployed at the Amplitide FM headquarters in Yaounde as journalists mobilize to pay tribute to their fallen colleague. What an irony…positioning security at the wrong time and place whereas they were conspicuously absent when they were most needed.

As a media family, we are concerned for our own safety and the safety of the entire media family in Cameroon. We believe in objective journalism and believe that if any journalist is found to be involved in unethical journalism, the courts are there to give out appropriate sentences but for any journalist to be killed for doing their job, that is an excess that we will condemn to our fullest ability.

As a result of the aforementioned reasons, we find the statement issued by the Minister of Communication to fall short of the standards we would have expected.

We will continue our objective, truthful, impartial and fearless journalism, reporting on truthful, unmanipulated facts as we have always done and we trust that our Government will work and see to it that those behind the killing of Martinez Zogo face the full force of Cameroonian law.

We thank the powers that be for the provisions made for journalism practise in Cameroon but like the fictional character Oliver Twist, we are asking for more. More legal protection for journalists, more freedom for journalists to investigate and report on issues of local and national importance since we understand the importance of fair and balanced journalism to the building of a strong nation like Cameroon.