Special fund for Anglophone print media: Biya, consider our plea.

The press all over the world has been fashioned as the fourth estate after the legislative, judicial and executive realms of the state. 

Irish writer, Oscar Wilde, epitomised the important role of the media with the United States as an example where "the president reigns for four years and journalism governs forever and ever".

In Cameroon, that role is constrained by many excruciating factors. The brutal conflict in the North West and South West Regions has been a terrible cataclysm to the power of Anglophone print media. Journalists have been targets of kidnapping for ransom and causalities from stray bullets.

Left in the lurch of financial and insecurity, their authority as the fourth estate derived from moral power, has not been very effective in playing their role in contributing to end the fighting, instil peace and hold the other realms of state to public accountability without compromising their independence.

That explains why last week, Ngah Christian Mbipgo, President of the Cameroon English Language Newspaper Publishers’ Association, CENPA, while opening a two-day workshop in Ebolowa, appealed to President Paul Biya, to create a special fund for “dying Anglophone print media”.

At the workshop, which held under the theme "Rescuing the dying Anglophone print media", Ngah, said: “Most of the English language newspaper Publishers, already seriously affected by the armed conflict in the North West and South West Regions, can barely afford the high publication cost”.

He added that: “English language newspapers have, because of the crisis, lost more than 80% of their readership in the North West and South West Regions”.

“The disturbing situation of English language newspapers has further been compounded by the economic downturn, caused by the armed conflict in the North West and South West Regions, high cost of printing materials, lack of sponsors and the advent of the social media, which have seriously affected sales of printed newspaper copies,” he explained. 

As a solution to the economic nightmare the Anglophone print media is mired in, Ngah, who is Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian Post, said they would “...not be seen to be asking too much, if we plead with the President of the Republic, through His Excellency, the Minister of Communication, to create a Special Fund for English language newspapers".

Confirming the plight of the Publishers, the South Regional Delegate of Communication, Beko’o B’evina Marguerite Solange, who represented the Minister of Communication, also recalled the dire challenges being faced by the print media. She noted that the English language newspapers “are most hit by this decline of readership in publications and other crises that the sector is facing”.

She added that the workshop “is a great move to analyse the current state of affairs and draw conclusions on what can be done in order to cushion the agony the English print media in Cameroon” is going through.

“The government of Cameroon, through the Ministry of Communication, is ever ready to stand by the side of English language newspaper sector to help in resolving this crisis that the sector is going through,” the delegate said. 

“The wish of the Ministry of Communication is to see the English language newspaper sector revamped...," Beko’o pointed out.

Giving government’s aid to the independent media has been a controversial issue. But those who oppose with the fragile argument that it can be used to control the media have been in an insignificant minority. That explains why several countries in the world, including advanced democracies like the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Italy etc give subsidies to privately-owned media houses without wielding editorial influence.

The assistance come in various forms like exemption from VAT, tax exemptions, payment of social insurance for journalists and direct cash to Publishers. Such support amount to momentous amounts, in some cases a percentage of the national budgets.

In Cameroon, government offers "aids to private communication," which include audiovisuals, television, printing presses, social and print media. The assistance pales into insignificance to be called aid by any terminology compared to what other countries, even in impoverished Africa, grant to their media.

Take the case of last year when the Cameroon government doled out an insultive 56 million FCFA as media aid to some 75 media organs. The amount was a free fall from 120 million FCFA offered in 2021 and 250 million FCFA when it started a few years go.

Does that graph illustrate government's willingness to support the private media and journalism, especially of English expression, specifically hit by the six-year macabre conflict in the two Regions?

Government's penny-pinching aid to the private media in the country could be interpreted as the hubris of some economic downturn. But it is a wrong political spectacle as the consequences of a cripplingly dying media could harm the regime that needs the cooperation of a strong, viable and credible independent media for its campaign of "living together" and the corruption creep.

The Guardian Post joins Anglophone newspaper Publishers to urge President Biya to grant their request. And if President Biya, in his magnanimity, endorses the creation of a special fund for the publishers of English language newspapers, it will be a silver bullet for survival and moral power the media need.

Newspaper publishers must, in reciprocation of appreciation, if the President hopefully makes a nod, strive to promote within their various organs, independence, innovation, objectivity, investigative reporting and defend public interest. That shall be proof that what they may glean from the government in kind or cash, shall serve the supreme interest of informing the public with the truth, even if it means stepping on the sensitive toes of the donor.