{"id":14359,"date":"2011-09-12T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2011-09-12T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=14359"},"modified":"2011-09-09T20:12:05","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T19:12:05","slug":"death-by-tabloid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/09\/death-by-tabloid\/","title":{"rendered":"Death by Tabloid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Uganda\u2019s Most Infamous Journalist Makes No Apologies<\/em><\/p>\n

IT\u2019S MID-AFTERNOON when Giles Muhame, 23, finally arrives at the canteen of Kampala\u2019s Makerere University. He first blames the traffic, and then suggests that he was observing me from a distance for some time. Making sure I was not working for them<\/em>. \u201cThese homosexuals are very dangerous, by the way,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Muhame knows this is true, he tells me, because he investigated homosexuality last year, while he was still a journalism student. After interviewing 20 \u201cex-homosexuals,\u201d he revealed his findings in Rolling Stone<\/em>, a sporadically published tabloid newspaper that he and two classmates launched last August. \u201cWe Shall Recruit 1,000,000 Innocent Kids by 2012\u2014Homos,\u201d roared the front page of Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2019s fifth issue, which included a promise to publish 100 pictures of the country\u2019s \u201ctop homos.\u201d Two of them, including a gay activist named David Kato, were pictured on the front page, under the words \u201cHang Them.\u201d Kato, who the paper said \u201cspots [sic] a clean shaven moustache,\u201d took Muhame and Rolling Stone<\/em> to court, winning an injunction preventing Muhame and the paper from publishing any more pictures or information identifying gays. Three weeks later, shortly before I met Muhame, Kato was bludgeoned to death with a hammer.<\/p>\n

After running the story identifying Kato, Rolling Stone<\/em> published a piece headlined \u201cHomo Generals Plotted Kampala Terror Attacks.\u201d The \u201cintelligence exclusive\u201d alleged that a gay lobby conspired with al-Shabaab, a Somali Islamist group, to plot the July 2010 suicide bombings in Kampala that killed 76 people. Showing me the story, Muhame leans forward and softly says, \u201cSee, there\u2019s a link between homosexuals and terror.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some Ugandans dismiss Muhame as a crank and his roughly 2,000-copy paper as an irrelevance. Andrew, founder of The Independent<\/em>, a weekly current-affairs magazine, says he first saw a copy of Rolling Stone<\/em> on CNN and calls Muhame \u201can ignorant boy.\u201d Yet it is also true that anti-gay feeling is now so entrenched in Uganda that what is shocking to outsiders merely reflects common local views. President Yoweri Museveni has claimed that gays are trying to \u201crecruit\u201d followers, and a bill before parliament calls for gays to be locked up for life and even executed. Rolling Stone<\/em> also owes its existence to another, more surprising factor: although Uganda\u2019s leaders like to portray themselves as the guardians of a deeply conservative, Christianity-based culture, Uganda has developed what is perhaps Africa\u2019s most sensationalist, predatory, and lurid tabloid press.<\/p>\n

The tabloid tradition dates back to the 1990s, when the state-owned New Vision <\/em>newspaper began publishing local-language dailies such as Bukedde <\/em>and Orumuri<\/em>, which reported village scandals and printed graphic photographs of crime, conflict, and car accidents. At the same time, magazines such as Chic<\/em> and Secrets<\/em> published stories and pictures about sex. But the real change came in 2001, with the launch of the privately owned Red Pepper <\/em>newspaper, whose name refers to a popular spice and is a play on \u201cread paper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Its model was the best-selling British tabloid The Sun<\/em>, famous for topless page-3 girls and clever wordplay. Red Pepper<\/em> left its models\u2019 tops on\u2014just\u2014but otherwise covered similar themes: political gossip, sex scandals, intelligence, and soccer. It sent its photographers into bars and nightclubs, and ran an explicit photo essay about students having sex on a beach. Meanwhile its subeditors began coining words that soon became street slang. (A penis became a \u201cwhopper,\u201d as in the story headlined \u201c[Government] Ministers with the Biggest Whopper.\u201d) \u201cThe language is very creative, and Red Pepper <\/em>has a tremendous vitality,\u201d says William Pike, the editor of New Vision <\/em>until a few years ago. \u201cBut it is also tasteless and started a tradition of a flagrant disregard for the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arinaitwe Rugyendo, who co-founded Red Pepper <\/em>when he was 23 years old and is now managing editor, rejects this characterization, as well as accusations that the government gives the paper a soft ride, though he admits that Museveni has been supportive at times. \u201cRed Pepper <\/em>is tolerated by society because we have similar ideals to Americans\u2014we like our freedoms,\u201d says Rugyendo. Except when it comes to homosexuality. The paper began \u201couting\u201d gay men, using first names only, in 2006; shortly before Muhame began contributing (he stopped reporting for the paper last year, when he launched Rolling Stone<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Red Pepper<\/em> says that its sales are around 25,000, making it the third- or fourth-biggest daily in the country. (New Vision<\/em>, the largest, has a circulation of 31,000.) But it now publishes much-less-explicit pictures, in order to placate advertisers who complained. The raunchiest material is published by a new sister paper called the Daily Onion<\/em>. Peter Mwesige, the executive director of the African Centre for Media Excellence in Kampala and the former head of Makerere\u2019s journalism school, said Rolling Stone<\/em> has attempted to copy Red Pepper<\/em>\u2019s success, but has gone too far. \u201cThese guys [like Muhame] have studied, so they understand journalism ethics. But they probably think they need to go to extremes to create a niche.\u201d<\/p>\n

Muhame does not deny his ambition. He wants to have an impact on society, to change lives\u2014as suggested by his newspaper\u2019s title, which is a rough translation of a local word, enkurungu<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s a metaphor for something that strikes with lightning speed, that can kill someone if thrown at them,\u201d Muhame tells me. His heroes, he says, are Julian Assange and Bob Woodward.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Xan Rice is a journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theatlantic.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After running the story identifying gay activist David Kato (bludgeoned to death with a hammer shortly after), [Ugandan] Rolling Stone published a piece headlined \u201cHomo Generals Plotted Kampala Terror Attacks.\u201d The \u201cintelligence exclusive\u201d alleged that a gay lobby conspired with al-Shabaab, a Somali Islamist group, to plot the July 2010 suicide bombings in Kampala that killed 76 people. Showing me the story, Muhame leans forward and softly says, \u201cSee, there\u2019s a link between homosexuals and terror.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}