Isn’t Mwenda Museveni’s new spin doctor?
By Abbey K Semuwemba
31st Oct 2011: I guess the real question here is this: Would Andrew Mwenda’s magazine have published the information about the alleged ‘forged’ oil documents if honourable Karuhanga had not presented them in parliament? Did Andrew really think that not publishing his findings earlier on would have eventually led to the end of the documents in the public spectrum?
He should have broken the story to Ugandans as, at least, ‘forged documents’ in the oil scandal rather than sitting on them with the help of President Museveni and Uganda police. Andrew prides himself for digging up news not published anywhere else like shocking security secrets.
But I suspect that what he digs up is the sort of humdrum stuff a journalist with “influential’’ friends in the state should have. This does not make this information more important to Ugandans than what they read in the Daily Monitor or The Observer.
I don’t know whether it’s only me but I never read any of these ‘secret intelligence’ files published in The Independent magazine. Anyone with connections to the people in power (Andrew looks every bit like one now) can assemble stuff like that. But is it worth anybody’s time?
For instance, if you juxtapose Martin Luther king’s public image with his personal shenanigans, you can make him look very foolish. Also true for John Kennedy with his womanizing. So what’s the point? That Dr. King and Kennedy were attracted to power to gain access to high class women?
As a long time admirer of Andrew Mwenda, I feel so disappointed in what he has become today. What has really happened to him? I had him down as one of Uganda’s [finest] journalists. I thought he will one day win the Annual Bastiat Prize for Journalism.
The prize was established and run by the International Policy Network (IPN – a UK based NGO) to “…encourage and reward writers whose published works promote the institutions of a free society”. That is how IPN’s patron saint, 19th century French-born Frederic Bastiat saw things.
He had a deep distrust of government in any form and thought regulation and control were inefficient, economically destructive, and morally wrong. As IPN puts it, it supports “…limited government, rule of law brokered by an independent judiciary, protection of private property, free markets, free speech, and sound science.”
Andrew is right that good journalism is about news based on real sources and objective data. But his reactions on Capital FM’s show with Alan Kasujja seem to point to the fact that he may not be doing journalism anymore but spin.
There was no need [for Andrew] to publicly defend the ministers implicated in the said documents because there are people like Tamale Mirundi and Pamela Ankunda of Uganda Media Centre) who are employed to do that kind of work.
I guess most elites in Kampala are now looking at Andrew Mwenda in the same way Americans looked at Walter Duranty who worked for New York Times in 1930s. Walter visited Russia when Stalin was the leader and reported that nothing was happening there, and yet people in Ukraine had been dying of famine for up to 10 years.
But because of his connections with influential people in both the Russian and American government, he ended up with a Pulitzer Prize which still stands up to now. END. Please login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.
