A chilling example of political interference happened in 2005, when, shortly after her appointment, the Minister of Information and Broadcasting told NBC staff that they must promote the SWAPO manifesto in all their programmes. While this was a Cabinet directive issued to all ministries, it is a point of grave concern that NBC journalists were instructed to favour one party’s manifesto over others when the NBC should be a neutral, public and independent broadcaster. While there is no general editorial policy at the NBC, the state broadcaster does have a strict election-coverage policy in terms of giving equal airtime to each party. There are loopholes, however. For example, in the run-up to the last elections, former president Nujoma was known to hijack legitimate news events to promote SWAPO by wearing the party’s colours. Many of the news journalists at the NBC are young, new to the job and very inexperienced. “To throw them in at the deep end with no support from senior journalists or management, and no internal editorial policy, results in poor editorial decisions being taken.” Editorial interference appears to be happening in a more subtle manner. “You don’t have to interfere in the editorial policy when people are not doing any critical reporting. There is widescale self-censorship among [NBC] journalists.” Because these young journalists do not want to rock the boat, and possibly lose their jobs, investigative journalism suffers. The reason for the high degree of self-censorship might also be that some key staff members are political appointees. There is the impression that the NBC does have some journalists capable of doing in-depth, professional interviews (notable when the opposition is in trouble) but this is not put into practice across the board. There was consensus that the degree of editorial independence differs among the various language services of the NBC. While the newsroom controls news centrally, the language services have a higher degree of independence when it comes to programmes. The formerly hard-hitting, investigative programme Open File, however, has been scaled down, resulting in more social commentary and soft stories. The tendency in television and radio news to give priority coverage to the activities of the president and ministers has been less evident since Pohamba became president two years ago. “There does seem to be more space ... The current president doesn’t have the same stature as Nujoma.” The NBC now covers news about the National Society of Human Rights, for example, something unheard of during Nujoma’s reign. The state broadcaster does appear to be bowing to commercial pressure, as is evident by local language news broadcasts being downgraded and shifted to a 07h00 slot the following day. In their place soap operas are now being broadcast. The NBC used to be a 24-hour station, but it now closes at 00h00 and opens at 06h00. This is possibly related to the growth in popularity of One Africa Television, to increased competition and DSTV’s prominence among the elite. A worrying sign is the apparent content change on radio in terms of less news and debate being broadcast in favour of more music. This signals the erosion of NBC’s mission primarily to inform and educate, and lastly to entertain. So This Is Democracy? 2007 -210- Media Institute of Southern Africa