MARITA van Rooyen of the monthly Travel News Namibia magazine and Manfred Isaacks of the Namibia College for Open Learning (Namcol) scored the biggest awards at the Misa Namibia Media awards held in the capital on Wednesday.
The two walked away with the awards for Journalist of the Year in the print and broadcast categories respectively. Isaacks is the radio project co-ordinator for Namcol and also serves as treasurer in the Misa Namibia national governing council. Van Rooyen walked away with three other awards, among them first place for sport reporting, proving to be a tough competitor for Namibian Sun’s Festus Nakatana, who took second place, and Republikein’s Des Erasmus who took third place. Other big winners at the awards included Insight magazine’s Tangeni Amupadhi, who walked away with four awards, The Namibian’s Tileni Mongudhi with three awards and Nangula Shejavali with two.Lendl Isaacks of Radio Wave won three awards. Emsie Erastus of Namibian Sun, Renate Rengura of the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and The Namibian’s Selma Shipanga and Absalom Shigwedha also walked away with credits to their names. Other winners included Eberhard Hofmann of the Algemeine Zeitung, NBC’s Tonateni Ishitile and Steven Ndorokaze, One Africa TV’s Luke Salomo and Francois Lottering and Sister Namibia’s Liz Frank. The winners received cash prizes ranging from N$500 to N$5 000. The Minister of Information and Communication Technology, Joel Kaapanda, took the media to task for the ‘injustices they inflict’. ‘It is clear that the media are serious about their social responsibility function. However, I sometimes get the impression that these social responsibility initiatives are aimed at self-glorification, while the media don’t really care about the injustices that they inflict upon others,’ he said. ‘Why is the media continuously questioning the good intentions of the government of the day?’ he asked. He said the media were quick to blame Government and others for not responding timely to their enquiries but ‘we read in one our of our dailies that the media are ignoring their self-appointed Media Ombudsman, a respected individual appointed by the media to investigate public complaints against the media and decide on action’. Meanwhile, the fact that Namcol’s Manfred Isaacks scooped the award for broadcast journalist of the year has raised eyebrows in media circles.’First of all if it is an occasion to honour the courageous work of journalists, then how do you award entries for public relations work?’ asked Max Hamata, editor of the weekly newspaper Informanté. Hamata said he had misgivings about some of the judges, pointing out that two of them had featured in articles published in his paper and this could have made them biased.’If Misa Namibia is serious about these awards, they should have appointed people who appreciate and understand what courageous journalism is about, as they did in the past by getting professionals from media houses such as the [South African] Mail and Guardian. Journalists’ work should not be put in a position to compete with the work of those in marketing and public relations as they are conflicting professions,’ he said. Insight’s Tangeni Amupadhi also expressed concern about the legitimacy of some of the entries, saying that news reports should not be confused with marketing and public relations work. Misa Namibia chairperson Marbeline Mwashekele said a press release would be issued to clear up all doubts, concerns and misgivings anyone might have.
