wa t c h i n g t h e by J i m Phillips
watchdogs Former journalist explores how African media can play a stronger role in emerging democracies
usuf Kalyango can remember three different times–in 1977, 1983, and 2000–when his father, a farmer and trader in the African nation of Uganda, was arrested and jailed by three successive governments of that country.
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Despite the brutality and harsh treatment the elder Kalyango received at the hands of state officials, however, his son notes in a new book about African media and democracy, he “still pledges his unwavering support for the Ugandan regime,” holding no grudge against the leaders “whose security men threw him in a military prison without charges or trial.” For Kalyango, director of Ohio University’s Institute for International Journalism, such tolerance and even affection for a blatantly oppressive system “defies logic and common sense.” That same sense of bafflement came back to Kalyango during research for his book, African Media and Democratization: Public Opinion, Ownership, and the Rule of Law. In the course of