FreeSpeak

Our #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister connects via Zoom with JJ Omojuwa, Chief Strategist at Alpha Reach to discuss the controversial topic of social media influencers and what this may mean for journalism and access to information, especially in the African context. Omojuwa is a Nigerian blogger author, public speaker, political commentator and a verified social media expert with over a million followers on Twitter.

Building on more than a century of its history, radio remains one of the most trusted and widely used media. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister unpacks the importance of radio with Norah Appolus, a seasoned journalist with more than 40 years' experience in the broadcasting industry, and shining light in the Namibian broadcasting landscape David Bishop, Head of news at Future Media.

Today we take you back to what was #FreeSpeak’s first vodcast on the #Fishrot scandal. Our host Gwen Lister spoke with Shinovene Immanuel, head of the investigative desk at The Namibian newspaper and Helgi Seljan, investigative reporter of Icelandic National Broadcasting Corporation just as the scandal was beginning to erupt in 2019.

Do young people trust the media? And why do Africans seem to care less about freedoms now than they did a decade ago? Youthful Ndapwa Alweendo, freelance writer and editor, and Omar van Reneen, a civil rights activist & co-founder of Equal Namibia, explore concerns of declining levels of trust in the media with our #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister.

On November 2 we join the rest of the world to commemorate the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists (IDEI) - an important day for press freedom. More specifically to focus on the safety of journalists, who need an enabling environment – and not a climate of fear – in order to do their jobs to the best of their ability. Mozambique is one of the countries in which attacks on journalists has become commonplace. #LetsTakeAMoment to unpack this issue with #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister and Editor of Mozambique’s leading weekly newspaper, Fernando Goncalves.

Great journalism needs good journalists. Few would argue with this statement. The media world is currently preoccupied with the challenge of sustaining good journalism and the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) is no exception. GFMD is an international network of journalism support and media development organisations intent on securing a sustainable future for journalism as a public good. For this to be realised, training excellence, newsroom diversity and the strong presence of women in the sector, are a given. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister discusses this and more with the director of the Namibia Media Trust and first African chairperson of the GFMD, Zoé Titus.

Access to information (ATI) is a topical issue. We’ve just celebrated the International Day for Universal Access to Information, and there’s finally an ATI Bill before Parliament years after the Action Namibia Coalition and others started work on the project with the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) in 2016. So, there’s light at the end of the tunnel as it is set to become law. The Covid pandemic however has given even more impetus to the necessity of such access on the part of both citizens and journalists alike, given the predominance of disinformation around Covid measures in general and vaccines in particular. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister chats with Frederico Links, the chairperson of the Coalition, about the urgency of an ATI law in the prevailing circumstances.

#FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister talks to Joseph Ailonga (Jossy Joss) Broadcast Manager at The Namibian and Tangeni Amupadhi Editor of The Namibian newspaper, about the newspaper’s exciting initiative to branch out into radio. The Namibian is about to launch its new venture, Desert Radio, as part of its multimedia offering. They reflect on the media’s struggle for sustainability in a time when audiences have been captured by the digital space, on pushing a multimedia newsroom and, most importantly, on how to sustain good journalism.

In part 1 of this #FreeSpeak podcast we looked at the issue of artificial intelligence and its impact on journalism, and in a conversation with Mattia Peretti, of the LSE’s Polis project JournalismAI, we focused on the rollout of AI in newsrooms, and what this concept really means. We stopped short of looking at practical ways in which media owners and managers are currently exploring the potential of this tool in enabling the work of journalists. So, in this episode of the two-part podcast our #FreeSpeak host, Gwen Lister, chats to Styli Charalambous, who’s been an innovator since he co-founded the Daily Maverick in South Africa in 2009.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in the newsroom … has it already progressed from an idea to a reality? Is the journalism world keeping pace with the evolution of new technologies? #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister tackles these issues with Mattia Peretti who is at the helm of running Journalism AI at Polis which involves research, training and collaborative initiatives in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics.

The new Clubhouse app is a relatively newcomer on the ‘streets of the Internet’, and one that has quickly caught fire with young Namibians. Clubhouse is an audio app that allows people to get together to communicate in various voice chatrooms on topics ranging from virtual clubbing to book club chats to discussions around race and identity. Tutaleni Asino, associate professor in educational technology at the Oklahoma State University in the US, talks to #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister about what is driving the phenomenal uptake of this app.

The future of good journalism hangs in the balance for a whole plethora of reasons, and many feel that its future depends on the professionalism of those who practice the craft. At the core of this uncertainty is the issue of journalism education, and the sustainability of ethical independent journalism that can push back the tide of disinformation to best serve democracy. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister talks to seasoned journalist, former editor and media trainer Paula Fray, owner of the Pan-African media training organisation, Fray College of Communication.

There is a huge responsibility for big tech, in particular, for online users themselves, to try and combat disinformation. What can journalists do to curb the spread of disinformation, especially on social media? These are the issues our #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister deliberates on with Editor of the Namibian Sun, Toivo Njabela.

This episode spotlights our #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister who discusses her recently released memoir, #ComradeEditor, with former colleague and guest host Graham Hopwood. Lister, one of Africa's foremost journalists, achieved global repute for opposing South Africa’s occupation of Namibia. Here she and Hopwood have a candid discussion about life in former apartheid South West Africa, her career in journalism and the start of the iconic independent newspaper, The Namibian. #ComradeEditor is available at the Namibia Media Trust’s office, the Book Den and Exclusive Books

Bob Vezera Kandetu, a former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, who also served as Director General at the Namibia Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and Sakeus Iikela, Secretary-General of the Namibia Media Professionals Union (Nampu), join FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister in a review of the impact of the just-concluded month-long strike by NBC journalists and workers.

Digital rights and freedoms were not on the table as an issue when the crafters of the Windhoek Declaration articulated their aspirations for a free, independent and pluralistic media in Africa 30 years ago. But the penetration of new technologies and the reliance on digital forms of information and entertainment in Africa is undeniable. What are the current concerns and challenges, and what does the future hold? Our panelists discuss this and more as they reflect on the evolution of media in the past 30 years.

In this special podcast to mark World Press Freedom Day 2021 and the 30th anniversary of the seminal Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press, CITE (Centre for Innovation and Technology) founder/director Zenzele Ndebele and journalist/lecturer/podcaster Makhosi Sibanda share insights about media developments in the last 30 years - since the adoption of the declaration - and what the future holds.

The Namibia Media Professionals Union (Nampu) has a very specific mandate to improve the welfare of journalists and media professionals in Namibia. The union’s main priority is to organise and unite local journalists and media workers operating in print, broadcasting and online mediums, and to allow for better bargaining and improved working conditions. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister talks to Kelvin Chiringa, radio presenter and journalist at Eagle FM, and Sakeus Iikela, journalist at the Namibian newspaper and secretary general of Nampu, about the views of Namibian journalists, and the Windhoek Declaration, and their expectations of the upcoming World Press Freedom Day conference.

Namibia will host the global 2021 World Press Freedom Day celebration which also marks the 30th anniversary of the 1991 Windhoek Declaration on a Free, Pluralistic and Independent African Press. How does press freedom affect young people and why should they care when this freedom comes under attack? This time around youthful Jessica Uiras and Juno Angula pose questions about this and related topics to our usual #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister, iconic journalist who is often referred to as the mother of the Windhoek Declaration. Lister chaired the plenary session on May 3, 1991, that scripted the Declaration.

Women journalists are not only attacked for being in the media space. They are attacked for being a woman. To mark International Women’s Day, celebrated on 8 March 2021, #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister talks to Zimbabwean journalist, researcher and free expression advocate Reyhana Masters, about the harassment of women journalists online and other forms of abuse which – according to a host of recent studies - appear to be worsening.

#FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister talks to youth leader Bertha Tobias and Dr. Phillip Santos, senior lecturer in the dept of communication at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST), about how youth is mobilising online against socio-economic injustices. But what happens when the threat of regulation comes into the picture? Many governments look for excuses to regulate and even shut down the internet, and point to a radicalised youth abusing their free speech as the reason. So how does the youth beat back the attempts to silence dissent and use social media for the greater good?

Some have written off radio as media with a sizeable foot in the future, but the Afrobarometer 2020 survey disputes this, saying that radio is still the most powerful source of information, reaching more people than any other medium on the continent and is likely to remain so. With the 10th anniversary of World Radio Day on February 13, #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister talks to well-known DJ and producer at 99FM, Che Ulenga, and Levi Ngarune Katire, station manager at Omaheke (community) radio and Chairperson of the Namibia Community Broadcasters Network about their experience in this medium.

Public confusion and backlash around a WhatsApp update and concerns around data-sharing with its Facebook owners has resulted in them pushing back a privacy policy update. The data-sharing announcement prompted many users to flee WhatsApp and sign on to other messaging apps, like Signal and Telegram. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister discusses this latest controversy with digital rights activist and ACTION Namibia Coalition chairperson, Frederico Links. Have you made the switch? Tell us why. #DataPrivacy #BigTech

How can podcasts be used as a tool for (media) sustainability, advocacy and training? #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister discussed these and other issues with Director of Volume, Paul McNally. This episode was recorded during a three-day virtual conference on the ‘Future of Journalism Education in Southern Africa’, jointly hosted in December 2020 by the Namibia Media Trust, DW Akademie and MISA Malawi. Is podcasting taking off in Africa? Let us know what you think. #OmuuongeUozombuzeConference2020 #PodcastingAfrica

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a full-blown pandemic in Namibia. How Namibian media cover the scourge of GBV is one of the most urgent problems we face as a country. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister speaks with two powerful young women, youth leader Bertha Tobias, and journalist Ndapewoshali Shapwanale, who were themselves involved in the recent #ShutItAllDown protests where mainly women took the street in protest against GBV and femicide. Together they examine media coverage of the GBV and related issues.

For ordinary folk, it’s often difficult to know what’s fact and what’s fiction in this post-truth world. So media literacy, the ability of people to critically use media, plays an essential role in helping them navigate the information minefields that are out there. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister sits down with Jan Lublinksi, head of policy and learning at the Deutsche Welle Akademie and their coordinator for Media and Information Literacy (MIL) in southern Africa, Lizette Feris - to talk about the state of media literacy in Namibia and other parts of the continent. Central to the discussion is Deutsche Welle Akademie’s just-released MIL Index, a report which covers media literacy habits in six African countries, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Namibia. The full study is available online at https://bit.ly/2G4vBQh #ThinkBeforeSharing #MediaLiteracy

Self regulation is a pledge by quality conscious media professionals to maintain a dialogue with the public - a good way of describing the endeavor by newsrooms to abide by a code of ethics and be accountable to the public. With the formation of the Editors' Forum of Namibia, a Media Ombudsman was appointed to arbitrate complaints by members of the public who felt they hadn’t been dealt a fair hand by the fourth estate. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister sits down with Namibia’s Media Ombudsman Dr John Nakuta to talk about the concept of self-regulation – including the promise and the problems of this system.

Access to information (ATI) has been described as the ‘mother of all rights’, and there’s been a sustained push by civil society organisations since 2016 to get an ATI law in place in Namibia. We finally have a bill, due to come up in the next session of parliament, which we hope will soon become law. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister speaks with feminist, gender and human rights activist Linda Magano Baumann and Augetto Graig, a journalist with Republikein and member of the steering committee of the nascent Media Professionals’ Union of Namibia, about the principle of ATI and its resonance, or not, in the lives of Namibians.

It is only through an independent trade union that journalists will have a collective voice that can speak for them, independent of both governments and employers. Finally, a Namibia journalists union is on the cards in the form of the newly registered Media Professionals Union of Namibia (MPUN). #FreeSpeak's Gwen Lister hosts MPUN interim chairperson Jemima Beukes and working group member Kelvin Chiringa for a discussion on the union’s aims and objectives.

In the midst of a deepening economic crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and shocking WFP prognosis that two thirds of Zimbabwe's population will need food aid by year-end, President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his Zanu-PF party are intent on further suppressing free expression. In his own words, he’s intent on ‘flushing out’ opponents of the regime, calling them ‘bad apples’ and ‘rogue elements in league with foreign detractors’. Journalists exposing corruption and many citizens protesting Zimbabwe’s slide into chaos are viciously silenced. Arbitrary arrests, torture and abductions are daily occurrences. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister discusses what’s happening there with two powerhouse Zimbabwean women, wellknown journalist Reyhana Masters and award winning novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga.

What can be done when public trust in media is severely eroded and what are the consequences for democracy? It seems this worryingly negative trend across the continent in recent years may currently be in reverse but it’s too early to celebrate yet because of very complex African attitudes to freedoms, notably press freedom. This, according to findings of Afrobarometer, a Pan African series of national public attitude surveys on democracy, governance and society. #FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister sits down with researcher Christie Keulder to shed light on these issues. Keulder heads the Survey Warehouse which conducts the Namibia assessment of the Afrobarometer.

How are the media – online and mainstream – covering issues relating to the Covid-19 pandemic; what news should be online and what not and where can we find quality rather than the quantity of information? How does or should legacy media reflect and report on what’s happening online – for example, mainly youth centered campaigns around the call to legalise abortion, petitions for a register of sex offenders, etc. Do newspapers, radio and TV have their fingers on the online pulse or are they losing touch? These are some of the issues that FreeSpeak host Gwen Lister chats about with Natasja Beyleveld, MD of NaMedia, which monitors what’s going on in our spectrum of media.

Arguably incidents of racism and tribalism shouldn’t still be happening in Namibia 30 years after independence and the fall of apartheid. But it’s almost like we’ve simply brushed the subject under the carpet through the policy of national reconciliation pretending it will all just go away. Clearly, we’ve still got a long way to go in fully addressing deep wounds and divisions in our ethnically diverse country. Gwen Lister and lawyer and human rights expert, Toni Hancox, Director of the Legal Assistance Centre, discuss the legal aspects and implications of hate speech including racism and tribalism, and what mainstream and social media can do about it.

Online platforms have given people voice they never had before the onset of the digital era, and while these fora are sometimes used as an an amplifier of progressive views opposed to racism and injustice, among others, they also serve as a platform for hate speech and insult. Gwen Lister and Dr. Admire Mare discuss these issues in the context of the #BlackLivesMatter and #GallowsMustFall campaigns.

How are Namibian newsrooms, their managers and editors, adapting (or not) to the hard new realities for the print media? And are young journalists being treated badly in the process? This is the focus of today’s Freespeak podcast, and guests, Max Hamata, owner and editor of Confidente newspaper, and Ronelle Rademeyer, news editor of Die Republikein and Secretary General of the Editors Forum of Namibia (EFN)weigh in on this topical discussion.

Gwen Lister hosts Johnathan Beukes, online editor at the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and Jemima Beukes, senior reporter at the Sun newspaper, for a discussion about current constraints - both internal and external - faced by media in general, and journalists in particular.

Fiscal transparency is absolutely crucial during times of national emergency, says the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) who recently launched the findings of the 2019 Open Budget Survey. The survey measures and compares transparency, public participation, and oversight of a country’s budget process. Gwen Lister sat down with the IPPR team, Graham Hopwood and Martha Nangolo, to unpack the findings and their significance for Namibia.

Are media getting it right in terms of covering the Covid-19 pandemic? What is the media doing about the tsunami of lies and disinformation that proliferates at this time, especially online? These are the issues that Gwen Lister tackles as she sits down with Mahlatse Mahlase - Group Editor-in-Chief of Eyewitness News and chairperson of the South African Editors Forum, and Peter Deselaers - journalist and Country Representative of DW Akademie in Namibia.

Algorithms know a lot more about us than we know about them. The algorithm is a lot more than just predicting things we want to see and hear online, and the general public knows almost nothing about them, and even less about the engineers and coders who are creating them behind the scenes. Gwen Lister and co-founder of AlgorithmWatch, Lorenz Matzat, shed light on the characteristics and effects of complex algorithmic decision-making processes on the general public.

How can journalists do better? Gwen Lister sits down with senior journalists Mathias Haufiku and Tileni Mongudhi to talk about the significance of good journalism in the eye of the storm.

Namibian youth have strong opinions about where Namibia is today at 30 years of independence. Gwen Lister sits down with Ndapewoshali Shapwanale and Nafimane Halweendo to talk about problems and solutions and what the youth can do to make ours a success story.

FreeSpeak tackles the recent announcement by Namibia's Minister of Information and Communication Technology of a decision by Cabinet to investigate ways to regulate social media mainly because of concern for teenage pregnancies and to mitigate this.

The NMT celebrates World Radio Day 2020 and sits down with veteran Zambian journalist and radio founder, Mike Daka, to discuss how to overcome the challenges of sustaining good journalism for local communities.

@NamMediaTrust’s @GwenLister1and @TheNamibian editor @TangeniAmupadhi talk about the media’s perceived anti-government bias and the agenda against the media, all in the context of the still-unfolding #fishrot scandal. Here’s our podcast

The NMT's Gwen Lister in discussion with investigative journalists Shinovene Immanual and Helgi Seljan on the biggest investigative journalism exposés to hit Namibia and Iceland, the #fishrot scandal

The NMT's Gwen Lister in discussion with Frederico Links on Disinformation and Elections in Namibia, ahead of the launch of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) report, 'Fake News & Namibian Elections'.