The sustained attacks against the media by prominent members of our political and financial platforms have raised questions about the fine line between a democracy and a dictatorship. Before laying blame on anyone, it might be fair to ascertain the responsibilities of both the media and the authorities in power.  

There is no doubt that the media has its own sense of responsibility that it needs to respect, mainly when it comes to freedom of the press. In a ruling by the German Constitutional Court, freedom of the press was defined as “an institutional freedom which is guaranteed only inasmuch as it promotes the values of freedom of speech.” We would sure like to think that these are the values that the media wants to put forward. Truth be told, except for the few absurd outliers, the media in Mauritius does give a voice to the people. 

The government also needs to understand that expressing a point of view different from their own does not mean that the media is abusing the freedom of the press. There are realities of the political landscape that cannot be overlooked. For example, a survey in France found that 80% of the readers of the popular left-wing newspaper Libération actually shared the ideologies of the left. The proletariat is free to consume the news that it wants and for opinionated newspapers, magazines and radio networks, that is a truth that we need to live with. A truth that means we are often dealing with palatable readers and listeners rather than all segments of the population. It is also a truth that the government needs to live with as it attempts to curtail our freedom.

However, any conversation about freedom of the press seems to play into the hands of the government. There is a very simple logic behind that. Freedom of the press is a concept that does not have a definition which is set in stone. It gives the government some leeway to push the boundaries and tempt us into talking about these more abstract issues rather than focus on what is in front of us. That is because what is in front of us is a lot more damning!

Take the case of Ramesh Basant Roi, governor of the Bank of Mauritius, who lost his temper when a journalist asked him about an alleged meeting with the controversial Álvaro Sobrinho. He argued that it had wrongly been reported in the news and that he was not present at the meeting. He then went on to lecture to the media about their own responsibilities, immediately taking the heat off him. 

The media picks up on that clip of him getting angry and, out of nowhere, it becomes news. However, the real question should have been on his absence from that meeting. Was he simply not there because he could not make it that day? Or was he not there because he knew there was something suspicious about Sobrinho? Either way, his smokescreen worked.  

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