(A four-part series by Alieu Famara Sagnia)
Part 2: Information minister says GPU and MCG are collaborators
By Alieu Famara Sagnia
“GPU is with us all the way, and the Media Council. This is an inclusive process. It’s not like we are making a legislation and forcing it on people. We are not doing that…”
According to Information Minister Ismaila Ceesay, the two controversial documents were produced – “…in partnership with Media Council and GPU… There is a committee set up that involves the Media Council and GPU.
“You will apply to them. And they issue it to you based on the criteria they set. The ministry is giving backstopping, to give support…”
This declaration by Information Minister Ismaila Ceesay, speaking in an interview, was transcribed from the attached video clip.
I stumbled on this video clip of the minister Ceesay interview on Facebook, and its contents are both relevant and quite revealing; that pertinence is why I share it here!
Yet, to be fair to the media practitioners’ trade Union, even the GPU recognizes, and concedes somewhere in its new policy documents formally launched recently, that it cannot compel aspiring journalists or practitioners to be a member, nor make them commit to abiding by the code before they are able or allowed to practice journalism in this country.
All it has said is that those who do not cooperate with the GPU and abide by its guidelines may not enjoy the privileges it provides or the incentives it offers members from time to time.
Reviewing the MCG document produced by the GPU has also shown no role stated therein for the MCG’s involvement in media accreditation, nor the registration of journalists or media houses.
The GPU Charter or code of conduct nowhere provides for the GPU’s involvement in media accreditation, in the registration or licensing of journalists, broadcasters, or media houses – whether print/press, radio, TV, or online/electronic/digital media in the Gambia.
Which explains why the current GPU executive could issue its unequivocal statement on the circulated Information Ministry’s “drafts”!
And, so we must ask: where did the contents of the Information Ministry’s “draft(s)” come from?
We recall that the Ministry announced a consultation on a new broadcast media law for the country. Was this the product of that consultancy?
The matter of the “Draft National Press Accreditation Policy for The Gambia & Draft Broadcasting and Online Content Regulations, 2025” first came to public attention in a TAT story on the reactions of the former GPU presidents to this development.
Conspicuously absent on that list is Bai Emil Touray, a former two-term GPU president and well-known Gambian journalist.
Touray was appointed by the Barrow Administration to serve as a commissioner in the new Access to Information Commission.
Broadcaster-journalist Baboucar Cham is Touray’s co-member of the Media Council of the Gambia (the MCG set up for media self-regulation), and both of them have subsequently (consequently?) been appointed as Access to Information Commissioners.
Both men are on the Information Commission with John Njie, a vocal civil society activist.
Njie was with Pro-PAG before serving as head of YMCA Gambia, in which capacity he served as a rotating chairman of TANGO.
There, he caught the eye of the Office of the President at State House in Banjul, which tipped him to serve on its team of organizers of the National Dialogue.
John Njie is now the vice chairperson of the new Access to Information Commission.
Meanwhile, both Touray and Cham continue to serve on the MCG, and now as Information Commissioners, as well.
Which obviously means their hands (tongues?) – especially that of Emil – are tied, and thus cannot publicly say what they think of Ismaila Ceesay’s plans for media accreditation, and regulating broadcast and online media content in the Gambia.
This explains Emil’s absence in the TAT report on interviewing past GPU presidents to get their reactions, and, thus our assertion that he and Cham would have been compromised – see part 1.
