(MISA/IFEX) – On 28 January 2000, the privately owned Radio Phoenix announced it was reinstating Let the People Talk, a phone-in programme which it had earlier scrapped, saying this was in order “to keep peace with the sponsors.” Radio Phoenix General manager, Elizabeth Pemba, who was flanked by the station’s managing director Errol Hickly, told […]
(MISA/IFEX) – On 28 January 2000, the privately owned Radio Phoenix announced it was reinstating Let the People Talk, a phone-in programme which it had earlier scrapped, saying this was in order “to keep peace with the sponsors.”
Radio Phoenix General manager, Elizabeth Pemba, who was flanked by the station’s managing director Errol Hickly, told a press briefing, “to keep peace with the sponsors, we will continue and run the programme to its full extent.”
BACKGROUND:
Let the People Talk, a twice-weekly programme, began on 12 January and focussed on a strike and subsequent dismissal of junior doctors in Lusaka and Kitwe. On 24 January, after running only four of the scheduled ten programmes, Pemba wrote to the programme’s sponsors, the Inter-African Network for Human Rights and Development (AFRONET), informing them that she was scrapping it, and citing “several hiccups.”
The station management claimed that the programme was not balanced because it failed to give the view of the Ministry of Health, despite the admission that the ministry had been invited, but had repeatedly failed to respond to requests to appear on the programme. Speculation was rife that the action was the result of political pressure emanating from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Services, but this was flatly denied by the station management.
