SECTOR 1 Media-affiliated panellists noted their concern that two recently passed acts, the Cybercrimes Act and the Statistics Act (passed in April and March 2015 respectively), were “going to kill us for sure”. These two bills were rushed through parliament under ‘certificates of urgency’ and even by early June 2015 final versions of these bills had not been made public, leading to considerable uncertainty among those in the media and the general public. The draft of the Statistics Bill makes the dissemination of statistics restrictive, including making it illegal for anyone to publish or communicate “false” statistical information or statistical information that “may result in the distortion of facts”, with associated severe penalties. Ultimately, the bill makes the publication of any Tanzanian statistics legal only if approval had been granted by the National Bureau of Statistics. The Cybercrimes Act is seen by critics as an attempt by the state to clamp down on citizens’ freedom of expression by tightening the online space and making it an offence to publish online information that is “false, deceptive, misleading or inaccurate’. With such uncertainties abounding, a panellist noted: “It’s too early to predict how things will go… but I don’t want to bank on the proposed constitution.” Instead of laws that support freedom of expression, Tanzania has numerous laws that severely infringe upon this basic human right. These include the Newspaper Act (1976), the Penal Code (1945), the National Security Act (1970) and the Public Service Act (1962). For more on how these acts inhibit the functioning of the media, see indicator 1.3. Scores: Individual scores: 1 Country does not meet indicator 2 Country meets only a few aspects of indicator 3 Country meets some aspects of indicator 4 Country meets most aspects of indicator 5 Country meets all aspects of the indicator Average score: 2.7 (2012 = 2.5; 2010 = 2.7; 2008 = 2.4; 2006 = 2.8) AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER Tanzania 2015 13