By Adama Makasuba
Honourable Serign Modou Njie, Minister of Defence has explained that the military-media relation requires understanding and respecting the norms, values and professional ethos of the order.
He was speaking at Joint Officers Mess in Kotu during a media-military interface discussion that seeks to provide a unique platform to engage journalists in a constructive and educative discussion on issues bothers national security.
“The professional obligation to the public means that the press and the army need each other to perform their primary function. In this light the press needs access to inform officers to provide accurate, well source and contextualise information especially on the arms of government. And also, the press needs members of the military to provide leads that generate headlines.
“On the hand, the military has increasingly come to recognise that it needs the press to enable military operation in the information domain to maintain its relationship with the public it serve to help spread its message or to consolidate battle field gain by influencing and contextualising the public narrative,” he said.
“Both parties in this complicated relationship have incentives to cooperative and also the incentive to against the other side. For journalists information should be opened and accessible while for the military officer secrecy and security are often the paramount consideration. a healthy military-media relation requires each side understanding and respecting the norms, values and professional ethos of the order,” he added.
Mamat O Cham, deputy chief of defence said The Gambia Armed Forces command feel that in order to move the agenda of the country forward, “there is needs to be very constructive engagement in the form of communication between the armed forces and the press.”
“The Gambia is going through a reform and democratic process and it means that the institutions of governance need to open up to the public be accountable and mechanisms through which their activities are scrutinise to inform people. The armed forces are constitutionally mandated to protect the national security of the country, ensuring that our sovereignty is protected.
“Our territorial integrity is protected. Probably most of the things we do should be below the line should not be open to public in order to avoid our advance, our plans, our strategy and our efforts going into the wrong hands and becoming knowledge to our adversary and probably they could use it against us. Notwithstanding, there is a need for reasonable disclosure so that those who serve are also aware that we do is purely to ensure their safety and security,” he added.
