REGINALD MENGI. Stories lacking balance result from corruption!!!

Meet challenges together, Mengi tells media owners

By Felister Peter
29th June 2010

In the above article printed in the Guardian, Reginald Mengi states “There are serious problems with respect to observance of basic media ethics. People don’t go behind the news and investigate to get the truth. Most stories lacking balance result from the influence of corruption.  Corruption is inside people, and so a corrupt person cannot stop taking bribes even if he or she were to be given hefty amounts of money.”

The IPP Executive Chairman also mentioned problems with the observance of professional ethics, saying: he implored journalists to avoid lacing news stories with opinions “because having an opinion in a news story is the equivalent of having a virus in the body”.

Strange that his own newspapers are not adhering to his recommendations in respect of the Silverdale Farm case. In this case reporting by IPP Media was defamatory and at times amounted to criminal libel under the laws of Tanzania. All IPP Media's article attacked British investor Stewart Middleton and his staff on Silverdale Farm and  was couched in a language of accusation and no right of reply ever given.

Lets us examine IPP Media's reporting of the Silverdale Farm Case. In 2006, the following highly abusive article was published by IPP Media's The Guardian Newspaper.

 

Clearly there seems to be absolutely no balance in this article and it breaches just about every rule of journalism in respect of the laws of defamation and prompted the response below from the British government.

Reginald Mengi states, “There are serious problems with respect to observance of basic media ethics, people don’t go behind the news and investigate to get the truth.  Well clearly IPP Media didn't do this in the Silvetdale Farm case.

Mengis states 'most stories lacking balance result from the influence of corruption'. Indeed!!!