The Tanzanian Communication Agency has suspended the licences of six television and 21 radio stations for failing to pay regulatory fees.<\/p>\n
The agency says that it issued a payment notice to 40 stations last July, but only 13 have paid the fees, hence the order for the remaining 27 stations to stop broadcasting.<\/p>\n
But the Media Council of Tanzania (MCT) has criticised the decision saying the move infringes the public right to information.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the BBC, MCT Executive Secretary Kajubi Mukajanga said stopping the stations from broadcasting is simply depriving people of important information.<\/p>\n
He said there could be other ways to force the stations to pay the fees.<\/p>\n
The Sahara Media Group, which owns three of the affected stations, has denied allegations that they have not paid the fees.<\/p>\n
The government has also permanently banned the weekly Kiswahili tabloid Mawio for alleged incitement of violence.<\/p>\n
The decision comes only few days after the lifting of a ban on the regional English newspaper The East African, which was banned early last year.<\/p>\n
Minister of Information Nape Nnauye said Mawio’s reporting style contravened the Newspaper Act.<\/p>\n
The law has for a long time been criticised as outdated and restricting the freedom of expression.<\/p>\n
The law gives the minister of information power to suspend or even ban a newspaper.<\/p>\n
The Media Council of Tanzania (MCT) says it has been disappointed by the ban.<\/p>\n
“We had hoped that the new government would have chosen a different approach in dealing with the accused faulty media, but looks like nothing has changed”, says MCT Executive Secretary Kajubi Mkajanga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Tanzanian Communication Agency has suspended the licences of six television and 21 radio stations for failing to pay regulatory fees. The agency says that it issued a payment notice to 40 stations last July, but only 13 have paid the fees, hence the order for the remaining 27 stations to stop broadcasting. But the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}