{UAH} BUT WHY IS THE MEDIA INTOLERANT TO CRITICISM?

The other side of the same coin in Mr. Trump's conflict with a local CNN journalist is that the media should not be intolerant to freedom of expression and free speech when they are the ones being criticized in a public debate. They are humans just like everybody else and therefore serve under these same principles just like everybody else. It should not be acceptable to anyone that the press has for decades publicly become the lead unchallenged perpetrator of hate, slander, malicious misinformation, and deliberate ridicule against target individuals. While private citizens can say what they want as long as it is in the boundaries of the law, the media should accept to be held at even higher standards of tolerance. It however seems that they do not want to be criticized when they go wrong. Why shouldn't their dwindling ethics and editorial professionalism be questioned by anyone?

For decades the news media is known to have been at the center of questionable political agenda's including against third world countries and their leaders. Even internally within countries, the local media is rife with agenda's.

I remember how, following the sad events of September 11th 2001, the ensuing war in Iraq became the clearest case study of how the international media knowingly absconded from their duty of impartiality and accountability, and instead decided to knowingly conspire to further a vicious political agenda based on lies, one that not only curbed individual rights and freedoms of their own citizens, but also saw an estimated 6 million innocent people killed in Iraq. The victims and their surviving relatives are yet to hear a single apology by any international media organization for their dispicable role in helping cause all those deaths of innocent men, women and children. Deaths that continue to this day.

There is freedom of speech but nobody should maintain media practices that support the killing, torture, incarceration and silencing of innocent people.

This has caused understandable radicalization of previously peaceful communities and therefore the international media should accept it's responsibility in building international terrorism, have contributed to the killing of their own innocent western citizens and also the gruesome deaths and life shattering injuries of their nations own men and women in uniform fighting "dumb wars" fueled with the connivance of their own media. 

But the press is mysteriously silent about all that, isn't it? Yet they demand respect for the noble profession that they misuse.

I am not a Trump supporter. Far from that. I feel he is a malicious person who is literally always pointing fingers at others and never looks in the mirror to accept responsibility for his own continuous unpresidential mistakes, one after the other.

But I know for a fact that my late father remains to this day a unique victim of concerted malicious international media coverage and ridicule.

Mbu "Butcher of Uganda".

Then what was all the serious crimes against humanity all over the country after Amin left the country and which were committed by known war criminals.

How does any respectable Ugandan media refuse to mention the word genocide in Luweero and another in Acholi, Northern Uganda yet all the human skulls are there and these poor people were killed based on ethnicity, tribalism and other sectarian motives?

They would all rather keep silent about these horrors and instead discuss their false narratives about Idi Amin.

It is no longer a secret that no African or black leader in history has been attacked, ridiculed, slandered, demonized, and falsely accused of non-existent crimes more than President Idi Amin.

To this day I await any accountability (record of incidents & dates) for the 500,000 Ugandans the media says he killed. Where is the tally list?

As I have stated publicly before, Uganda never had any mass graves and human skulls lying everywhere until after Amin.

And those responsible for those heinous war crimes against innocent peasants are known.

By their utterances against Amin, during his presidency, the international media is therefore responsible for what happened to millions of Ugandans after Amin.

So why such dishonesty against an individual?

Mbu "history", mbu "human rights record".

What then are all the other bloodbaths happening to this day in this country?

It is the media playing politics, right? Covering the politicians they support and lying about those they hate. Or is it also racism, intolerance, greed and/or anger against someone who stood up against despicable local, international and colonial injustices, and who fought against the tribalism in the country and the unfettered plunder of Africans?

What about when he stood against the heartless abuse, discrimination and exploitation of black people in general?

Many of these international media organizations once branded Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King as terrorists for standing up against white abuse and deadly white bullying.

Therefore rather than try to stifle the debate about their malpractices, the media should first accept criticism, be able to apologize, and tolerate the very principles of free speech and individual rights that they claim to stand for. Then they should strive to guarantee impartial, ethical and professional news coverage regardless of reporters political affiliations and/or personal opinions. Just like doctors and lawyers are ethically obligated to treat alleged criminals and good citizens without discrimination or their personal views on patients, the media should operate under the same guidelines and let their audience make their own learned opinion rather than attempt to coerce unsuspecting audience members into following their reporters political opinions on individuals they hate.

And just like every human, every government, and every industry which all get criticism and are under some form of oversight, the media cannot be allowed to be exempt lest they cause more deliberate harm than good as examples mentioned above attest.

The press should be the first to tolerate Trump's freedom of speech, then recognize the obvious issues he raises about the media as everyone can see for themselves.

And lastly, they should not in any way, shape or form attempt to muzzle or curb any criticism of the press whatsoever but instead debate their own serious mistakes as well.

By Hussein Lumumba Amin

Date: 08/11/2018

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