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used to conduct election campaigns.
Records by the same Ministry show that
the number of Internet users rose to 6
million by May 2012 from 5.3 million at
the end of 2011.
Right now the mushrooming of the
independent bloggers is unimaginable.
A good number of them publish content
that isn’t suitable for society consumption.
Because the Internet can be easily accessed via mobile phones, bloggers
can easily post anything at any time, and
people share whatever is posted without
caring who is at the receiving end. And,
the number of Internet users is growing
at unprecedented rate, which includes
mostly the youth.
The biggest challenge that faces civic
journalism is content censorship. There
are codes of ethics for every profession.
Journalism has it but it doesn’t necessarily apply to civic journalism. With the
rise of the digital age, information sharing has become so easy but at a greater
cost. With mainstream media, it wasn’t
possible or it is not possible to publish
photos of a mutilated body but with
social media, people share and ‘like’ on
Facebook walls without considering the
effect it will cause to those involved.
There is a need for a code of ethics in
the new brave world of digital communications and some sort of censorship
to regulate the industry. In so doing, the
rate of moral decadence and misuse of
the new media can be controlled.



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The media industry in Tanzania is
currently facing many challenges, from
outdated laws such as The Newspaper
Act (1976), which was used to ban the
MwanaHalisi newspaper, to the appalling
relationship between the police and the
media, to unethical journalism done by
many unprofessional journalist, who are
better know by the alias, ‘makanjanja’.
This has put the industry in the dilemma on how to fully exploit its opportunity as the government’s watchdog. Unless broad measures are taken
to repeal all the bad laws that deny the
freedom of press in the country, it will
be awkward to boast ourselves as Tanzanians as a free society.

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