Media experts in the country have urged Malawians to start showing interest and react to stories and reports covered by the local media.<\/p>\n
The remarks follow massive reaction to the British Broadcasting Corporation\u2019s (BBC) story about Eric Aniva from Nsanje district who claimed to have slept with over 100 young girls in ritual cleansing.<\/p>\n
Aniva confessed to be HIV positive, a thing that has attracted public furore and knee jerk reactions. Aniva has since been arrested following an order from President Peter Mutharika who said Aniva \u201cembarrassed\u201d the nation.<\/p>\n
Some Malawians on the social media have faulted Mutharika for ordering the arrest of Aniva after the story appeared on BBC when nothing was done when the same story previously came out in The Daily Times <\/em>as well as on Times Television <\/em>in a documentary programme called Loud Whisper. <\/em><\/p>\n Zackie Yah Man wrote on his face book page that it does not make sense for the President to act now when the documentary of the story was aired on Times TV <\/em>months ago.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is sad that the president wants to act now. I watched this documentary five if not six months ago on Times TV. <\/em>Is it true that we have to wait for BBC to expose us and then we should act? Why do we look down upon our own media houses?\u201d argued Zackie.<\/p>\n Chairperson of Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa) Malawi, Thom Khanje, explained that the President has not reacted because the matter has appeared on BBC, but it is out of massive reaction from audience that has moved Mutharika.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be honest, I did not see much reaction from the people of Malawi when the documentary about the man appeared on Times TV, <\/em>unlike when the story recently appeared on BBC even before the President reacted, Malawians had already responded massively on the issue. I think the President has probably reacted to the reaction of Malawians on the BBC story. It is high time Malawians started paying attention to the local media and react because that way it can be motivating,\u201d stated Khanje.<\/p>\n Journalism and Media Studies Lecturer at Polytechnic, Francis Chikunkhuzeni, feels the story has gained momentum because the international community shared it on social media whilst local media missed that part.<\/p>\n \u201cI cannot say government did not take heed to what local media transmitted on this matter. Media houses in the country are doing a commendable job but, you know, it takes mass coverage for an issue to get massive recognition. It is possible that the international media first got the story from local media and that is still a credit for local media houses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Media experts in the country have urged Malawians to start showing interest and react to stories and reports covered by the local media. The remarks follow massive reaction to the British Broadcasting Corporation\u2019s (BBC) story about Eric Aniva from Nsanje district who claimed to have slept with over 100 young girls in ritual cleansing. Aniva […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":28998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28996","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=28996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28999,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28996\/revisions\/28999"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}