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Momodou
Denmark
11804 Posts |
 Posted - 22 Mar 2010 : 13:22:00
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Lang Tombong Tamba’s Unfair Comments
The former chief of defense staff, Lieutenant-General Lang Tombong Tamba on Friday 19th March 2010 verbally assaulted journalists covering the court proceedings at the High Court in Banjul saying that no single paper ever wrote anything concerning his arrest and subsequent detention at the State Central Prison Mile Two.
He questioned why, according to him, journalists were rushing to the court to cover the trial when they have not written anything about his detention for the past four months.
In the morning before the proceedings started he was complaining bitterly. Infact some of the journalists taught that he was talking to his family members to stop crying but to their surprise he was referring to them. And in the afternoon shortly after the court rose, he was saying the same thing. These unfair comments of Lang Tombong Tamba did not go down well with some journalists prompting a kind of confrontation between him and them.
The Daily News doesn’t want to speak for other papers but the paper has written stories and editorials concerning the arrest and detention of not only him but on all of them on many occasions. So how can someone like Tamba attack the media for not writing anything on his arrest and detention? This is very unfair. The whole country and the world at large can bear us witness as to what the media have been writing about him and his colleagues since their arrest and detention at Mile Two.
Let’s call a spade a spade, when our colleagues - six of them were arrested and convicted in this very Gambia, only to be later pardoned by the president, where was Lang Tombong Tamba then. Did he do anything to secure their release or visit their families, No! Why is he making noise now?
Journalists don’t arrest or detain people. We only report what is happening in town, period. Journalists do not make news but only report about it. So former CDS Tamba and others cases are news items, we do not need any permission to report about, nor do we need to distance ourselves from reporting on them. The media will continue to report about the case so long as it is proceeding at the public courts. No amount of cry will stop us from reporting about them.
So the best Tamba and others need to know is this- journalists are part and parcel of society and partners in development, period. We will continue to do our job professionally without fear or favor as expected of us. If any body feels that Gambian journalists are not doing enough then that is an opinion they are entitled to.
This is not the time for Tamba to be confronting the press, he should rather be concentrating on the trial itself.
Source: Dailynews
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A clear conscience fears no accusation - proverb from Sierra Leone |
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