Every country has news consumers—and news avoiders—who are media illiterate. OJ-UGANDA’s media literacy section exists to change that. Follow along.
Just two years after Red Pepper had launched, I attended a journalism workshop in Jinja, which was also attended by one of the paper’s reporters.
The reporter was Ahabwe or some such name. At one point, we shared a table in the gardens of the hotel where the workshop was held. When we returned to the conference halI, I realised I had forgotten my notebook on the table and went back to check.
The notebook had vanished—along with the notes I had taken during the workshop. It was a huge surprise for me. After all, every participant had been given a notebook. Why, I asked myself, would anyone take my notebook.
The answer to that question came days after the workshop when I was reading Red Pepper. The reporter had taken the notebook, photographed a page on which I had scribbled something and used it to illustrate a story about me saying I had become a dinosaur.
DIVE INTO PREVIOUS READS
I was not the first victim. Red Pepper took a scattergun approach writing fictional stories about just anyone to attract readers. There was no social media at the time, and few newspapers had websites. To read news, people had to buy newspapers.
Months before the story about me was published, the newspaper for which I was working, the Sunrise, had reported that Red Pepper had been evicted from its office in old Kampala for non-payment of rent.
It moved to Kavule near Bwaise before relocating to Namanve. And it pressed ahead with its total disregard for journalism ethics and professional standards. It shows why sometimes the mere fact that journalists are qualified and experienced is not enough to gain the trust of the public.
Red Pepper’s founders were no strangers to journalism. The paper was launched in 2001 by Richard Tusiime and Arinaitwe Rugyendo. Mr Tusiime was an industry veteran. In the early 1990s, he had worked as a reporter for the defunct Daily Topic, which started as Weekly Topic. He then joined Daily Monitor (then the Monitor) after Daily Topic folded.
Six reasons you should trust what you read on this website—and share it with confidence
1. Led by experience that travels well
Our founder and editorial director, Musaazi NAMITI, brings more than two decades of serious newsroom experience, including eight years as an editor at Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar, and consulting for the African Development Bank, UN agencies and Globe Media Asia in Cambodia. His global exposure anchors OJ-UGANDA.COM in professional rigour and fairness—standards that too often slip in Uganda’s crowded media space.
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When we err, we do not sweep it under the carpet/rug. Our corrections policy ensures every error is corrected immediately, with a clear note explaining what went wrong and what has been fixed. No quiet deletions. No half-truths.
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If you write for us, your ideas remain yours. We refine, not usurp. We share every edited version before publication, and we publish only work that is fact-based and mutually agreed upon. Your voice stays authentic—and honest.
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He was part of a team of journalists who quit Daily Monitor to start a weekly called the Crusader in December 1995. And when the Crusader folded in April 1999, he joined Vision Group as the editor of Orumuri, a defunct Runyankore-Runyakitara weekly. What’s more, he taught journalism at Makerere University.
His colleague, Mr Rugyendo, had also worked for Daily Monitor. But both did little or nothing to adhere to journalistic principles.
In fact, when the London Guardian wrote about the Red Pepper in April 2004, it called the rest of the major newspapers the “serious” ones, meaning Red Pepper was not.
In the Guardian article, which said Red Pepper had broken an AIDS taboo after it wrote an obituary about former foreign affairs minister James Wapakhabulo, saying he had succumbed to the disease, Nsaba Buturo, who was the minister of information, described its brand of journalism as “a danger to Uganda’s democratic gains”.
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS OUR READERS OFTEN ASK
Such was Red Pepper’s reputation that journalists who struggled to find jobs with respected news outlets and ended up working for it never publicly admitted that they were on its payroll. Notable examples include JB Wasswa, who was a news editor at Vision Group and Chris Obore, the director of communications at Parliament.
Red Pepper soldiers on and keeps a website that is patchily updated, but the era in which it could fabricate stories and force them into public belief is over. The information ecosystem has changed. For discerning news consumers, the takeaway is simple: journalists can have strong credentials and ignore ethics.
🔴 If you care about truth, credibility and understanding how journalism really works, media literacy is essential. Follow OJ-UGANDA’s media literacy section to sharpen your news sense and separate fact from fiction. Media literacy is your weapon against misinformation, manipulation and media distrust.
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