SECTOR 4 are inundated with a number of people, and you have to ask the question: What is it you are paying for.” However, this practice, particularly in the media, is unacceptable. “Every media house has code of conduct and editorial policies, but there are people who still take brown envelopes, and that’s a moral issue.” “Journalists themselves know it is wrong if they take money.” “Journalists provide a service for which these chaps believe the money they pay is supposed to advance their cause. Facilitation is meant to pave the way for certain agendas to be pursued. We shouldn’t be morally ambivalent about what it is. The elites try to justify this. It has become the new normal.” “It is an absolute no for a journalist to sign for money because if they are sent for an assignment, they should be free to write what they need to write, and should not be compromised in any way.” New Vision and the Monitor have published notices within their papers making it clear that stories should be run free of charge, and calling on the public to call them if journalists ask for money when carrying out their job, “We have zero tolerance for this, so where it happens, we sack them. We have had meetings with NGOs to tell them they shouldn’t be paying. But when they come to complain, these NGOs are unwilling to address it when we say let’s catch them.” However, some journalists create a different perception. “While the ads are out there, journalists give the impression that if we don’t facilitate, they won’t cover the story. We had an event where the speaker, a captain of industry, was surrounded by journalists. At that event, we said that we don’t facilitate journalists. And I can tell you, the story did not come out anywhere, and I made a conscious effort to look out for the reports. However, in other cases where we do facilitate, we always have some coverage. So facilitation does not guarantee, but it does raise the expectation of coverage.” Beyond the ‘facilitation fee’ issue, there have also been incidences where reporters have threatened to leak a story if they are not paid a bribe. “We hear that if you have a potentially salacious or scandalous story, you could get a phone call that ‘we have this story about you, and if you do abcd, we can change it or not publish it’.” Panellists also noted that certain tabloids, “Manufacture the stories, then try to extort money from you, or otherwise hang you out to dry with completely false news.” It is not only the journalists, however, who are to blame for the breaches of integrity and incidences of corruption in the media. “The problem is that there are also editors who are extorting monies because they have the leverage.” 70 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER UGANDA 2016