{"id":629,"date":"2010-01-19T11:07:18","date_gmt":"2010-01-19T16:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/delicious.com\/url\/0f015b6a240a652385ff75f2f7b8e0af#tomathon"},"modified":"2010-01-27T14:07:44","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T19:07:44","slug":"niger-welcome-to-the-para-government-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/2010\/01\/niger-welcome-to-the-para-government-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Niger: Welcome to the para government press"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&quot;L\u2019Afrique peut-elle se d\u00e9velopper? TANDJA a os\u00e9 !&quot; shouts the headline.  A suck-up piece about how President Tandja dares to reject colonial notions of &quot;democracy&quot; in favor of real &quot;African&quot; traditions.  This is the same crap we&#039;ve been fed for decades: cult of personality dressed up as liberation.  What&#039;s interesting is that the byline is Ousseini Lawali in &quot;La nation&quot; N\u00b000 of 13 January 2010.  Yes, Number Zero of a brand new paper in Niamey, bravely printing the stories other refuse to tell of how great the President is.    And so last week&#039;s meetings of the government press authority (CSC) come into focus.  While the CSC was founded in 1993 to protect journalism, it is now a government controlled censorship agency.  Last week it announced a vague &quot;refoundation&quot; of press laws and journalistic standards in Niger.  So we we likely see the vibrant, if little distributed, independent newspapers gagged in coming months, to be replaced by &quot;independent&quot; papers like &quot;la Nation&quot;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&quot;L\u2019Afrique peut-elle se d\u00e9velopper? TANDJA a os\u00e9 !&quot; shouts the headline.  A suck-up piece about how President Tandja dares to reject colonial notions of &quot;democracy&quot; in favor of real &quot;African&quot; traditions.  This is the same crap we&#039;ve been fed for decades: cult of personality dressed up as liberation.  What&#039;s interesting is that the byline is Ousseini Lawali in &quot;La nation&quot; N\u00b000 of 13 January 2010.  Yes, Number Zero of a brand new paper in Niamey, bravely printing the stories other refuse to tell of how great the President is.    And so last week&#039;s meetings of the government press authority (CSC) come into focus.  While the CSC was founded in 1993 to protect journalism, it is now a government controlled censorship agency.  Last week it announced a vague &quot;refoundation&quot; of press laws and journalistic standards in Niger.  So we we likely see the vibrant, if little distributed, independent newspapers gagged in coming months, to be replaced by &quot;independent&quot; papers like &quot;la Nation&quot;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/2010\/01\/niger-welcome-to-the-para-government-press\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1705,"url":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/2010\/03\/niger-arrests-continue-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":629,"position":0},"title":"Niger: Arrests continue","date":"March 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The arrests I noted earlier continued Monday, with at least 13 figures being held at the Gendarmerie, including top leaders who rallied to Tandja's 6th Republic in 2009: former PM and MNSD party leader Seini Oumarou, Mohamed Ben Omar and Moktar Kassoum...","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Afrique&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":712,"url":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/2010\/02\/niger-is-2010-just-1999-backwards\/","url_meta":{"origin":629,"position":1},"title":"Niger: Is 2010 just 1999 backwards?","date":"February 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The new military Junta in Niger has released their first real vision of their promised return to democracy. Niger's expectations, a redux of recent history, are being played to by the soldiers.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Featured&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":462,"url":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/2009\/11\/nigerpiling-on-the-pressure\/","url_meta":{"origin":629,"position":2},"title":"Niger:Piling on the Pressure","date":"November 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"As the \"Abuja I\" talks begin with ECOWAS, President Tandja of Niger is increasingly backed into a political and financial corner. Will his \"6th Republic\" be sacrificed as a way out?","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Featured&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":850,"url":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/2010\/02\/niger-tandja-to-get-red-cross-visit\/","url_meta":{"origin":629,"position":3},"title":"Niger: Tandja to get Red Cross visit","date":"February 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Col. Hima \"Pele\" Hamadou told the press this weekend that (ex) President Tandja would be visited by the Red Cross to confirm his health. Pele says that Tandja is under house arrest with his family. MNSD-Nassara VP Ali Sabo (assistant to party president Seini Oumarou and chair Albad\u00e9 Abouba, both\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Blog&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":261,"url":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/2009\/07\/opposition-from-all-sides\/","url_meta":{"origin":629,"position":4},"title":"Niger: Cracks In The Foundation","date":"July 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Aspiring President for Life of Niger Tandja Mamadou is coming under increasingly criticism from the outside.\u00a0 But it's Nigeriens who will doom his mission to create a new one man government. The Wednesday (1 July) General Strike, called \"Pays Mort\" (\"Dead Country\") by the opponents of newly minted dictator of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Afrique&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":258,"url":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/2009\/07\/getting-unwanted-attention\/","url_meta":{"origin":629,"position":5},"title":"Niger: Getting Unwanted Attention","date":"July 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Foreign governments are beginning to put public pressure of Tandja Mamadou, following his seizure of the power last Friday.\u00a0 Did anyone mention oil? After hearing the US State Department\u00a0 is getting all their information on Niger from Italian reporters in press briefings, it seems only fair to follow up.\u00a0 One\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Featured&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mYFK-a9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":639,"href":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions\/639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tomathon.com\/mphp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}