38 dominated newsrooms. Incidents of female photographers being harassed, especially in courts by accused persons, have also occurred. Women who try to break the proverbial glass ceiling and carry out accountability journalism have become objects of scrutiny and derision. For example, a Botswana Guardian investigative journalist, Yvonne Mooka, who exposed a prophet was trolled online and harassed by those who did not like her investigative story. This does not often happen to her male counterparts in the newsroom. IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the media industry is being felt acutely around the SADC region and Botswana in particular. The Botswana Gazette, a weekly newspaper had to abandon printing for the first time in three and a half decades and shifted to digital platforms. Other newspapers have hinted at closing down. The pandemic was just a catalyst for the further decline of the already ailing Botswana media, which has been struggling to keep up with technological innovation, as well as an upsurge of social media and declining revenue from advertising. For instance, on the eve of the general election in 2014, the government introduced an advertising ban on some critical media, which undermined their financial health and also led to job losses. For one newspaper, Mmegi, this resulted in losing nearly a quarter of its staff between 2013 and 2016. Despite government denial, the ban remains in force. (39) CENSORSHIP Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi CREDIT: BLOOMBERG branches of government. One alarming provision of the president’s emergency powers is the introduction of a prison term of up to five years or a $10 000 fine for anyone publishing information with “the intention to deceive” the public about Covid-19 or measures taken by the government to address the disease. (40) The powers under the state of emergency prohibits journalists from using “source(s) other than the [Botswana] Director of Health Services or the World Health Organisation” when reporting on Covid-19. Journalists who use other sources potentially face a fine of $10 000 or a five-year jail term. An August 2020 study by AfroBarometer, a research network that measures public attitudes on economic, social and political matters, found that the news media in Botswana is generally seen as free, and that the media can report without government interference in Botswana more than in most African countries. The national director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Botswana Chapter, Tefo Phatshwane had objected to the Emergency Powers Act, saying that it is prohibiting independent journalists from holding those in power to account. But the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic has pointed to limits of journalistic freedom and censorship by the government. EMERGENCY POWERS AND CITIZEN JOURNALISM Parliament had extended a State of Emergency law that gives Pres Masisi sweeping powers to rule by decree for another six-month period until March 2021. It was bulldozed through by the majority BDP despite opposition protests that putting power in the hands of one man will breed corruption and infringe on the powers of other There are well-grounded fears that emergency powers extend the government’s grip on supposedly independent media institutions. In June 2020, a schoolteacher was arrested after challenging the government’s claim that a health worker who was screening lawmakers