Malawi: GOVT bans adverts in private media

Malawi government is reported to have stopped advertising in one of the country's private media house Nation Publications Limited. Media reports in the southern African nation say that the Malawi government has ordered all its departments and other partners to stop advertising in the newspaper.

However no reason has been given as to why the government has issued such an order.

Nation Publications Limited are the publishers of The Nation, Weekend Nation, Nation on Sunday and Fuko newspapers.

The newspaper has since written a press release expressing concern on the development and seeking explanation from the government.

The press release carries a letter dated January 21, 2010 issued to one of University of Malawi’s constituent colleges – Polytechnic as telling them not to advertise in the newspaper.

“Following enquiries by the general public, media organisations and civil society organisations, we publish this statement to put on record what has been observed as proof of existence of a government directive to withhold advertising,” reads a statement signed by Executive Chairman Aleke Banda.

The newspaper says in its statement that this started as a rumour in January that government intended to issue a directive to all its ministries to stop adverts in its papers before it got hold of two letters which were circulating.

For the past months the paper has been running without adverts from the government departments.

But in one of its response to the letters which the newspaper wrote to government on the ban, the government says there was no ban but rather government departments were cutting costs on advertisement.

“I wish to enlighten the management of Nation Publications newspaper that government has over the years noticed that government ministries have been spending a lot of money on advertisement and in order to cut this it was resolved that this be minimized,” said Chief Secretary C. Msosa.

The newspaper has requested the government to give them reasons for their actions adding that media and government were inseparable partners in development.

National Media Institute of Southern Africa Misa Malawi chapter has since appealed to the government to keep its promise of working with the media as not suppress media freedom.

Many African governments have used the advertising tool which is the hub of generating money to silence private media who give negative reports on them.

In a related development the Kenyan government is also reported to have stopped its government departments from advertising in the Standard Media group.

-March 9, 2010 by Sam Banda Jnr

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Source: www.africanews.com/site/Malawi_bans_adverts_on_private_media/list_messages/30432 (accessed om 10.03.10)