Dear Advocate of Reasoning,
Two days ago, the world came together to reflect on press freedom under the theme “Reporting in the Brave New World: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Press Freedom and the Media.” But while much of the conversation focused on algorithms and automation, in parts of Africa, the danger isn’t futuristic. For many journalists across the continent, the threats have little to do with machines or algorithms, it’s the fear of physical violence and unlawful detentions.
In the last two weeks, The Liberalist has reported two painful stories of press repression unfolding in different corners of Africa, each casting a long shadow on the present and future of journalism on the continent.
The first incident narrates how campus journalists Akanni Oluwasegun and Olanshile Ogunrinu, both students of Nigeria’s University of Ibadan, were brutally attacked while covering a student union inauguration. Akanni, armed with nothing but his camera, filmed the event when a violent altercation broke out between security personnel and a protesting student. As he recorded, security officers turned on him, slammed him to the ground and seized his phone. Olanshile, president of the Union of Campus Journalists, tried to intervene but suffered the same fate—beaten and stripped of his equipment.
“I fear that the phone has been tapped or bugged,” Olanshile voiced his concerns after the attack. When his device was returned, he noticed that his WhatsApp began malfunctioning, fueling his suspicion that his communications had been compromised.
“The dangers of assaulting young journalists,” said Lekan Otufodunrin, a Director at the Media Career Development Network, “is that they will get the wrong picture about what this job is all about… that they are not free to talk when they graduate to practise journalism.”
The second incident reminds the world of a Cameroonian journalist Tsi Conrad who is serving a 15-year sentence for doing his job.
In December 2016, during mass protests in Bamenda against the government’s controversial policy to impose French in English-speaking regions, Conrad took out his camera and began filming the chaos as police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators. But the police could not allow him to do his job.
“The police seized and destroyed my camera and tortured me into signing a false confession,” Conrad wrote in a handwritten note smuggled from prison and published by Freedom House.
Authorities dragged him before a military tribunal and sentenced him to 15 years. Amnesty International reported that Conrad and over 1,000 others were convicted without fair trials.
“It is widely recognised that my detention is nothing more than retaliation for my reporting,” wrote Conrad.
While the two incidents happened years and borders apart, they speak the same language of fear and censorship. In fact, they formed part of a pattern of a constant climate of hostility in which journalism is treated as a threat and journalists as enemies.
In 2023, Reporters Without Borders ranked Cameroon among the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists. A coalition of the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Freedom House, reports “Cameroon has appeared consistently on CPJ’s annual prison census since 2014, and it is among the worst jailers of journalists in Africa, behind Egypt and Eritrea.” Nigeria, on the other hand, ranked 112th out of 180 countries in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index, making it one of the most perilous places for reporters in West Africa.
This year’s World Press Freedom Day asks us to reckon with the role of journalism in an age of artificial intelligence. But in much of Africa, the threat isn’t futuristic or silicon chips—it’s human and immediate. As long as the state sees the press as an enemy, not a pillar of democracy, no algorithm will save us as much as it hurts us.
So how can African journalists talk about AI disruption—or protection—in places where press freedom should be growing but is still fighting to exist?
This is Letters of Reasoning and this is from The Liberalist.
Stay free and keep reasoning.
