The Eastern Africa Editors Society (EAES) an umbrella body bringing together editor organizations in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya has in a statement confirmed that it will hold this years’ World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) activities in Tanzania on May 3, 2022.
“We are excited to being able to meet physically and discuss pertinent issues facing the media in the region,” EAES Chairman Churchill Otieno said.
Confirming the physical convening on Thursday morning, EAES Chairman Churchill Otieno said the Society looks forward to engaging robustly on freedom of expression, freedom of the media, and access to information issues in the region and beyond. This will be the third regional convening and the first to be held physically.
“We are excited to be able to meet physically and discuss pertinent issues facing the media in the region. We are also grateful to Tanzania and the Tanzania Editors Forum (TEF) for showing magnanimity in hosting the convening,” he said in a statement.
This year, the theme for the World Press Freedom Day is ‘Journalism Under Surveillance’ and the region is tangibly alive to these issues.
Deodatus Balile, the Chairman of the Tanzania Editors Forum, said they look forward to celebrating the day with colleagues from the region and beyond.
“Tanzania is happy to play host to editors, journalists, and media professionals in the region. Going by this years’ theme, it is apt that the Society saw it fit to not only hold it physically, considering that COVID-19 continues to ravage communities, but also to visit Tanzania. World Press Freedom Day celebrated in Tanzania will solidify the media fraternity bond across the region,” he noted.
Last year’s World Press Freedom Day, the Society contributed to the Windhoek +30 Declaration under the overall theme of World Press Freedom Day, “Information as a Public Good”. The issues discussed and tabled in Windhoek were adopted.
The Windhoek +30 Declaration takes forward the spirit of the original 1991 Windhoek Declaration but refers to nowadays persistent and new challenges to media freedom such as the risk of media extinction amid a severe economic crisis and disruption of traditional media business models, increasing proliferation, amplification, and promotion of disinformation and hate speech, as well as enduring and new threats to the safety of journalists and the free exercise of journalism, including killings, harassment of women, offline and online attacks.
