In
the 1960s and 1970s, Third World governments prescribed and imposed a
certain kind of journalism variously called 'objective' journalism or
'development journalism'. They understood this as journalism restricted
to reporting 'facts' as dished out by their propagandists and did not
tolerate the questioning of government policy. By 'development
journalism', they meant the mere reporting of government efforts to
provide services, amenities and infrastructures and the singing of
praises anytime a bridge was inaugurated, irrespective of whether it was
well-built or whether the contract to build was awarded according to
the norms of transparency and probity. This one-sided journalism was
prevalent especially in state-owned media and media practitioners in the
few private news publications that existed who did not toe the line
were subjected to constant harassment and incarceration. However, with
the coming of well-trained journalism graduates into the scene in the
1970s and the advent of global liberalization in the late 1980s and
1990s, daring journalists like Sam-Nuvala Fonkem thought it was time to
take the bull by the horn and start taking a more critical look at
government pronouncements, matching policy statements with real action
in the field; in short, moving from 'objective' journalism to
interpretative and investigative journalism. This collection of
Sam-Nuvala Fonkem's writings is a sampling of the fruit of that new
spirit to dare where angels hitherto feared to tread, to hold public
officials to account and to expose the falsehood cached behind the
political masquerade of the ruling class.