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This study reviews and analyses the factors that have influenced media developments in Tanzania during the transition from one party socialist system to multiparty democracy. With a strong focus on policy as well as ethical issues, the study dwells more on how policy formulation in Tanzania has affected the role the mass media have played - and continue to play - in the new economic, political and social transformation.
Chapter two gives a bird's eye view of the media sector in Tanzania, especially events and issues that have shaped the sector's policies before and during the transition period, and how these, in turn, have impacted on the effectiveness of the media industry in playing its democratic roles today.
Chapter three addresses the contradiction that exists in the values that inform political and economic reforms on one hand and the media sector on the other. The premise of this position is that economic and political reforms do not occur in a vacuum because they tend to affect a system of existing values and practices in a society in which they are implemented. Whereas Tanzania has, in the last two decades, embarked on reforms that support pluralistic democracy, there appear to be a conspicuous - though ominous - resistance to reforming the media regulatory framework. Nevertheless, even the existing draconian laws have not helped to promote ethical journalism as one would have thought.
The chapter also gives an assessment of information (and media) policy formulation from post-independence period (1961) to the present time showing yet another contradiction that exists in reforming the media sector. Whereas the new Information and Broadcasting Policy of 2003 explicitly emphasises the need to promote press freedom and access to information - including the need to repeal and replace the current draconian laws with an appropriate media Act - the government has continued to drag its feet, suggesting that it would still wish to tame the media.
Chapter four focuses on some crucial issues relating to the role of media in a democracy, which have characterized debates in Tanzania. They include: the quest for Freedom of Information Act in Tanzania, the role of media in promoting peace, and the role of media in promoting good governance.
The Fifth chapter, which resulted from a separate empirical study, examines perceptions of Tanzanian journalists on such issues as the role of media in a democracy as well as sources of their ethical convictions. Chapter Six gives a brief review of the role of the Media Council of Tanzania and underscores the importance of self-regulation as an effective way of promoting media responsibility and press freedom in a democracy. |
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