The lecture, presented by veteran journalist Felix Mponda titled ‘from one-party state to pluralism,’ was held at the Raphael Tenthani Centre for Media Excellence at The Polytechnic Chichiri campus.

The presentation was spiced up by reminiscences on media practice in Malawi shared by seasoned journalists.

Mponda began his presentation by explaining how the media industry in the country worked in the past and how is performing now. He shared his professional experiences from his time at the Malawi News Agency (MANA) which he joined at a tender age.

“Working as a junior reporter at MANA during the one-party era, things were not easy at all as journalism was part and parcel of the party. I had to do all things involved in news production alone as no one could help me. Even editors were really tough if one wrote a story that was not good, they threw it back to the reporter,” he said.

Mponda said the situation worsened during the 1960s when the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) government established the Censorship Board which monitored and censored media content.

“The government started controlling the media after the Cabinet crisis of 1964. No foreign papers and journalists were allowed here in Malawi. A lot of mass media forms such as magazines, books, songs and periodicals were banned. Journalists were only allowed to write or report news articles that praised the government,” he reminisced.

While praising the opening up of the media space during and after the referendum period of 1993, Mponda bemoaned the unethical journalism that accompanied the political changes taking place in the country.

According to another veteran journalist, Willie Zingani, who also attended the lecture, unethical journalism remains a problem in the current media practice in Malawi.

“One cannot distinguish between a hard news story and fiction because in both of them reporters have put their emotions. A hard news story should be based on facts, not the reporter’s opinions,” said Zingani.

Karen Msiska, a journalism graduate from The Polytechnic, said besides the lack of objectivity, journalists in the country do not exhibit the hunger for reporting, resulting in journalism that is not based on facts.

On his part, facilitator of the presentation and a lecturer in the Department of Language and Communication, Focus Maganga, said the lecture created a platform for participants to appreciate the history and context that have shaped the media in Malawi.

“We cannot fully appreciate the practice and operating environment of our media if we don’t understand where our press is coming from. It was, therefore, a golden opportunity to have seasoned journalists who practised journalism in the one-party and tyrannical regime and still work in this democratic dispensation,” said Maganga.

A final year journalism and media studies student, Happy Mwachande, said the presentation has helped him to put things into perspective.

“There are a lot of issues that I have noticed in the media, especially negatives that until the presentation I thought were new in the industry,” said Mwachande.

The Raphael Tenthani Series is an initiative of the Department of Journalism and Media Studies designed to provide a platform for scholarly and professional engagement on the media, politics and democracy in Malawi. The series is named after the late BBC correspondent and prominent journalist Raphael Tenthani.