Gambia: Ahead of polls, digital media skirt censorship

By Alieu Manneh

BANJUL, Gambia (AA) - While state media in Gambia is government controlled and the private media practices self-censorship, political opponents of the small West African country’s strongman President Yahya Jammeh are using digital media to bypass the hurdles they face in reaching audiences.

Gambians are heading to presidential polls next week, on Dec. 1, and campaigns are already in motion, with the incumbent facing his former ally and a coalition of seven opposition parties.

“The Gambia Democratic Congress party does not have access to the state-owned Gambia Radio and Television Services. However we use Facebook, online radio, live streaming, and our own website to reach our audience,” Essa Jallow, press officer for the Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC), told Anadolu.

The GDC is a new opposition party formed this April by Mamma Kandeh, a former national assembly ruling party member.

When Isatou Touray, Gambia’s first female presidential candidate, announced in September that she was throwing her hat in the presidential ring, the news got widespread media attention internationally but no mention at all in the country’s state media.

But her campaign launch was livestreamed on Facebook and broadcast on Gambian online radio stations, whose operators are largely based in the United States and Europe.

- A wider reach

Social media watchers, users, and analysts – most of them from the opposition, and based abroad – argue that digital media coverage of the launch of Touray, now part of an opposition coalition led by the United Democratic Party’s Adama Barrow, reached a larger audience than state radio and TV could have delivered.

“It is obvious that social media has more reach than traditional media in Gambia,” Baboucarr Ceesay, a blogger and former vice president of the Gambia Press Union, told Anadolu Agency.

“If you look at the circulations of newspapers that mostly focus on hard news, none has a circulation of more than 2,000 copies. Online sites have more reach, and they are also operated by people outside, so they have the chance to avoid censorship.”

President Jammeh, who came to power through a military coup in 1994, has been slammed by human rights groups for cracking down on dissent and closing media outlets without due process.

On Nov. 10, the day Jammeh was certified to stand for elections by the country’s Independent Electoral Commission, journalists were instructed not to take pictures of him on their cellphones.

Alagie Manka, a photojournalist, and Yunus Salieu of the pro-government Daily Observer were both arrested that day, though Salieu was later released.

Emil Touray (no relation to Isatou Touray), head of the Gambia Press Union, told Anadolu that the situation in the country is not very favorable to the media.

“The state of media freedom in Gambia is at low ebb,” he said. “The period since the nomination of presidential candidates for the forthcoming election has been punctuated with the arrests of media practitioners.”

He added, “The arrests and detentions of media practitioners during this epic period of our country’s democratization process is unfortunate and regrettable and does not speak well of our democracy.”

In its latest report on Gambia released on Nov. 2, Human Rights Watch accused the Gambian government of a “crackdown on the opposition, domination of state media,” and suppression of independent media.

- Equal time?

Samba Jallow, the minority leader of Gambia’s national assembly, said the media restrictions in Gambia have led to the creation of various online media sites, radio stations, and newspapers mainly based in the U.S. and Europe, and run largely by activists and opposition elements.

“We don’t have access to our state television and radio except the limited time we are given by the IEC” – Independent Electoral Commission –“during campaign times,” Jallow told Anadolu.

“So that’s why we rely on online radio stations for news dissemination and consumption. And also most Gambians who want to hear news that might be considered critical of the government also listen to online radio because they know certain news won’t be published in the country.”

Gambia may have over 20 radio stations, but none of them actively air politically related news, except when they do news recaps from local newspapers that also censor themselves for fear of closure and arrest.

The opposition also has WhatsApp groups that they use to send audio messages to their supporters who then send them to others via Bluetooth.

The nation’s Independent Electoral Commission has come up with rules which are supposed to solve media bias problems by giving equal airtime to all political parties during elections.

“The IEC shall during an election campaign period ensure that equal airtime is given to each candidate and national party on the public radio and the television,” say the rules.

However, critics charge that only limited airtime is given at specific times to the opposition while the lion’s share of the broadcasts are used to propagate the ruling party’s ideas and policies.

And despite the effectiveness of the social media in reaching the electorate, its reach is limited due to the lack of smartphones and Internet availability in some communities.

“This is because a large number of people don't have access to the Internet. So the state media would still be important if the opposition had access to it,” argued Jallow of the Gambia Democratic Congress.