Talkative Polity. Florence Brisset-Foucault
the government—they were all at the district level. [. . .] These were the main sources for the radio—sources where we could get money. [. . .] Today [in 2008] the picture has changed, [but] when we went to Masaka [in 2001] there was little business. Masaka had been bombarded in 1979, most people had gone away because there was no business, and when AIDS came it affected the most productive people. [. . .] The town, by six o’clock, all the shops were closed. No one to buy. People were just farmers. [. . .] The only source of advertisement was government.44
Stations sold their airtime to local government agencies, NGOs, or local politicians. There were variations according to the region and the station, but generally, a one-hour talk show cost 1 million Ugandan shillings (around £250), in exchange for which the client could choose the topic of the show and even, in some cases, prepare the questions the presenter was going to ask. When I was in Masaka in 2008 and 2012, important clients included UNDP (United Nations Development Programme); USAID (US Agency for International Development); the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS); the Rakai Counselors’ Association (RACA); and Masaka Microfinance Association. A presenter I interviewed estimated that four shows out of ten he hosted were bought.45 Of course, as producers told me, it was much more difficult to contradict someone who paid for airtime. Even in between shows, journalists hesitated before running a critical report on a state agency or an organization that was also a client of the station.46 A presenter noted:
Since this client has his or her money, and it’s money that will pay your salary, you don’t need to frustrate your client, because he will make reports to your bosses and they will question you! Sometimes you just have to put away the professionalism and then . . . go to his or her choices. You have to keep your job.47
More generally speaking, as another staff member noted, a show can be much more “political [. . .] when it’s sponsored by Pepsi than when it’s bought by an NGO.”48 In this configuration, the presenter could hope that calls from listeners would provide a contradiction in a situation in which he himself did not feel at ease to do so for fear of retaliation.49
Configurations varied according to the politics and history of the region. In Northern Uganda for instance, the local economy has been particularly impacted by the presence of international NGOs. Mega FM is based in Gulu, the main urban center in the North. It is owned by the government, although it was relaunched with the support of the British Department for International Development (DFID) in 2002, in order to support the peace process in the region. On Mega FM, some programs were produced and hosted by employees of the NGOs who purchased airtime, giving a very good example of the overlapping of varied patterns of ownership and influence within the same media company (the state, international agencies, nongovernmental organizations). More generally, because they did not have many resources, journalists in Gulu were often dependent on NGOs’ infrastructures to conduct their reports, to go into the field, and so on, especially when the security situation was difficult.
Nevertheless, that dependency relationship was not unilateral. A station like Mega FM, and some producers individually, managed to negotiate their way within this grid of constraints, and even to turn the situation to their advantage. NGOs and local authorities needed the stations for their communication and consultation activities. Local stations might not have been as dependent on international NGOs as one might have thought, especially when these stations were not many in an area, because they could fix the prices relatively freely. Stations labeled as “community media”50 may actually have been more financially secure than commercial stations that relied on only commercial advertizing.51
Depolitization from Above and Below
The role of international NGOs toward the autonomization of the media was ambivalent. Securing the help of international NGOs may have allowed journalists to be more independent from other patrons such as the state or local politicians. However, collaborating with international NGOs (which were in a better position to afford airtime than local organizations) also implied a whole series of constraints on what could and what could not be said on-air. In addition, a lot of the airtime was actually bought by consortiums of international NGOs and local authorities, who usually, in any case, worked closely together in order to implement health programs or other public services. Generally speaking, many local and international NGOs in Uganda shied away from directly questioning the local or national leaders’ behavior and decisions, as they needed a certain level of cooperation with them in order for their programs to be effective, while also being closely monitored by the state.52
“Communication officers” who hosted programs on Mega FM in Gulu explained during interviews how their position impacted the way they could address political and social issues on the air. As one of them explained:
There are stories that I can get back from the field, like issues about the LRA and government, which I would really love to write, but where [should I] take these stories? [. . .] Taking a job in a nongovernmental organization can make you behave according to the philosophy of this organization. And it can be a contradiction if you are trained as a journalist.53
Generally, radio was an important tool for organizations engaged in pacification programs, and it is crucial to take this dimension into account to understand the situation in Gulu.54 After the trauma caused by the “hate media” in Rwanda, numerous “peace stations” were created in Africa, from Sierra Leone and Liberia to Burundi, by the UN and NGOs such as Search for Common Ground. Mega FM was relaunched in this context. A lot of guides, manuals, and gray literature have been produced on the peace media model, many of which attempt to evaluate the effect of such broadcasts on reconciliation. Others give guidance and advice to media practitioners.55 What can be called the peace media model actually gathers schools and methods, which have different names: proactive journalism, peace journalism, conflict-sensitive journalism, and the like. All these promote a language discipline that is thought to protect peace negotiations, prevent stereotypes and stigma, and avoid the encouragement of violence.56 Talk radio is seen especially as a good tool for pacification and development because of its potential for participation and dialogue. It is believed to favor the development of a culture of forgiveness, very often considered an alternative to judicial and criminal justice, which are regularly accused of jeopardizing peace processes.57 Talk radio is also believed to challenge political and social inequalities that influence the opportunities for people to voice their concerns.58
But talk radio can also be blamed for being a potential source of mayhem and hate speech. As a result, radio hosts are asked to enforce discipline and encourage listeners’ speech to be deployed according to a particular pattern: people calling in are urged to tell personal stories and testify to what happened to them, instead of pointing to others who might be responsible. They are discouraged from generalizing and relating their personal situation to more structural patterns of political rule.59
In Gulu, journalists tended to promote a particular model of transition and pacification through these interactive talk show formats and through their reporting practices. This model valued amnesty and pardon instead of the criminal prosecution and criminal trials promoted by the ICC (International Criminal Court).60 A journalist I interviewed explained how he sometimes chose what to write and what not to write in order to be “positive” about the peace process, even though he himself was not totally convinced by the idea that the media should serve peace:
Just a few days ago the government was here consulting people on the peace talks on what should be done. I went to the camps where they were consulting the people. They said the LRA and Kony should be forgiven. Although there was a kid there, a young kid who testified and said, “Me I would want this people to be punished severely, because I’ve lost my arm.” . . . He had one arm. [. . .] “I want when they come they should be punished severely” [the boy said]. But I decided to leave him and focus on what the majority of people had said. But otherwise if I had wanted, I could have written that the IDP [internally displaced persons] stated this people to be punished severely for the suffering they had given them. That is, I think, being positive enough in the reporting.61
In this context, the objective was to avoid demonizing the rebels to promote alternative reconciliation practices to the