Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 403508,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/403508/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 295,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ochieng",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2955,
        "legal_name": "David Ouma Ochieng'",
        "slug": "david-ouma-ochieng"
    },
    "content": "by this House. We should be making amendments to ensure that the members of this Council come before this House and we vet them. I agree with the Member that maybe, this is the only way out of making sure that the Media Council is not made up of Government apologists. We need independent people, whose main role and heart will be in making sure that the media acts responsibly and remains free and is not gagged. If you allow me to go ahead, we have had a very interesting scenerio in this country where thrice this House has rejected names of persons proposed to be members of the TSC and some of the reasons have come from the way we constitute the selection panel. So, it is important for us to be careful on how we constitute the selection panel. Again, I will move amendments to that effect to ensure that the panel is foolproof and it works well. Like my colleague has said, it does not give us names of people who were not interviewed. We should also have proper provisions in the Bill. We do not want to have an open-ended selection panel. We should provide for its creation and even for it to be discharged. So, we need to have provisions in the Bill on how the selection panel will operate, how we can remove a member if he or she is not doing the right thing and then how we discharge the panel from its functions once it has finished the functions. That is not there now. The second part of that Bill is very crucial. It establishes something called the Media Complaints Commission. In this country, a commission means something very different in the minds of most people. I will be proposing that we change that to “Media Complaints Tribunal” and not “commission”, so that it is in tandem with other quasi-judicial institutions in this country and so that it has powers. If we are going to appoint a person who is qualified to be a High Court Judge in this country, again, that appointment is by the JSC and not by somebody else who may not know what a High Court Judge should have in terms of qualifications. I may have much to say, but I want to leave it at the fact that the independence of the Media Council; the fact that the media must regulate itself, cannot be gainsaid. In doing so, this House must ensure that the laws that we pass here will not gag the media and vice versa. The media should not try to gag us in discussing issues. I beg to contrbitute."
}