Impacts of narrow media Coverage in Fichee-Cambalala celebration: A Critique of Ethiopian Television
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By: Kinkino Kia, August, 2013
As known, a Sidama nation is among the few nations in the world who
have its own calendar. Its new year and calendar, which is based on the
lunar calendar, is also different from the Gregorian, Muslim and
Ethiopian calendar. Moreover, the Sidama’s new year calendar is not
based on pre-determined and fixed date. Its date is fixe and determined
only through the ablest observations of the Sidama traditional
astrologists who follow the location of the stars in relation to the
moon and fix the date of Fichee accordingly. This is the very unique
element inherent in the Sidama’s calendar and which also distinguishes
the Sidama’s from other counterparts.
However, this unique
historical and cultural heritage has been not able to get wider media
coverage for long. This short piece criticizes the national television
and its regional allies to give due and aappropriate, comprehensive
transmission and coverage of this year’s Fichee-chambalala celebration
festivity.
As a matter of fact, Sidama’s fichee has been
celebrated among the Sidamas since the time immemorial. It has also
passed through different historical passages which is beyond the scope
of this piece. Even if it has long history traceable to the history of
the nation itself, lack of publicity and media coverage has critically
hampered its notability outside the Sidama world. This also partly
derives from the prevalent larger political pattern in which the
cultures, norms and values of the conquered peoples are not given
appropriate state recognition, let alone publicity. To the contrary, the
state machinery worked day and night to demolish and diminish
multi-culturalism and cultural foundations of the politically peripheral
peoples. It forced them to succumb to the norms of the dominant groups
who preached mono-ethnic, mono-lingual, mono-cultural and mono-religious
Ethiopian state.
Despite previous state-perpetrated horrific
injustices, the Sidama nation preserved its core cultural values and
norms. It safeguarded its Fichee-chambalala and its inherent elements.
The question now became “how has the existing political and media
atmosphere accommodated/accommodating the cultural elements of different
nations/nationalities such as Sidamas?”
In today’s world,
media has became the single most important and powerful instrument in
transforming and shaping the world. And even single, piecemeal event
matters in the global arena. Sidama’s culture can be a global event and
element only if it gains its proper place in different public and
private media outlets.
The Ethiopian media atmospheres
propagate and at a time reinforce the creations of the old political
system. Until today, the media are not accommodative of the cultures and
identities of the marginalized communities- marginalized not because of
failure on the part of concerned communities, but marginalized due to
the failure of political system a t work. The national media has no
apatite to integrate, transform and publicize the unique cultures of the
other nationalities. So, the media reinforces the conservative, partial
and old political system.
Coming back to the theme at hand,
this year’s Fichee-chambalala has been/and is being colourfully
celebrated throughout all Sidama region. But, as is the case always, the
available national and regional state-owned media outlets such as South
Fm 100.9, ETV and other newspapers are taken away by deep sleep so that
they can’t notice anything in the surrounding. They can’t hear and see
what is going on in the greater Sidamaland. Or they are told not to act
so. The can’t report or bring to the attention of the public what is
done by entire Sidama nation despite the professional calling of media
and journalism.
In today’s world, the quality of modern media
is partly measured by the production and dissemination of
indiscriminate, fair, impartial and reasonable information/news reports
about the events of regional and national importance. They are there to
serve the world’s quest for ‘what is going on/ new on the globe?’. But
the Ethiopian media as we witnessed in particular Fichee celebration, is
uni-dimensional, only tends to focus on the political face of the
country. If not so, it focuses on the issue of selected cultures and
values of old systems.
This year, as is the case always, our
Fichee-chambalala is celebrated throughout Sidama region by beautiful
Qeexala chants, faro and many other distinct games, very essential for
the global media consumption, the ETV is found to be doin quite
contrary. To the great detriment of the culture, it even failed to
produce enough one-time news stories on the festival. The Fichee
celebration in Sidama capital, Hawassa and its outskirts is very
outshining, immensely worthy for global media consumption and
international community. It also has invaluable importance in
identifying the people, tourist attraction and works of scholarship.
However, the Ethiopian television, which works day and night to
derogate every single political item in the Sidama region, it is not
there to produce a single news story concerning the Sidama new year
celebration which concerns over 5 million Sidama public and other peace
loving sisterly nations. It reports about Tigray’s Ashenda and Oromo’s
Erecha for over a week, but nothing for Sidama. But why? As one
commentator observed, Fichee is one of the few events in the country in
which respective ethnic groups are nationally mobilized. It is the super
norm and representative Sidama culture respected and observed by entire
Sidama public. However, its nature and significance is less noticed
outside of Sidama region and its children outside Sidama.
Observers state different reasons for the failure of national media to
report news story concerning Fichee-chambalala celebration. They claim
that even though the country and its supreme law-constitution vows to
succumb to the concepts of democracy, equality and non-discrimination,
its institutions including the media do not reflect such covenants in
real terms. The national television is still dominated by the people
surrounded by the same northern ethos and conceptions. Center-periphery
dichotomy is still prevalent. This critically hinders the room for equal
recognition and appraisal of the cultural values and identities of the
marginalized and maltreated. The media are there to serve ‘correct
groups of theirs’. As the popular saying runs, ETV prefers to show
ordinary dances of Amhara or Tigray than to working to integrate and
cover big cultural events of other nations/nationalities. This shows us
that the media is not democratically serving the people, not
accommodative and above all, not institutionalized in such a way that it
can accommodate and equally serve the interests of Ethiopian people.
Other commentators also observe that the current TPLF core who
dominated both politics and media, has a hidden political hatred against
the Sidama people. This emanated from the political and historical
discourse in which Sidama liberation fighters punished and devastated
TPLF’s soldiers in the highland Sidama regions in the early days of
EPRDF intrusion in to the Sidama territory. This is a public tale
repeatedly told by TPLF leaders whenever they appear. Moreover, the
contemporary Sidama is one of the potential regions to democratically
challenge the administrative arrangements sponsored by the TPLF
leadership. Sidamas are the first to oppose the unreasonably forced
political surgery and merger of the 5 autonomous southern regions and
who democratically and peacefully mobilized to regain their lost
regional status in the country. This is truly a real danger for the
victorious TPLF leadership. So, it forces the political core to be
cautious enough while dealing with cultural and natonal issues of Sidama
nation.
Ultimately, it can be argued that lack of access to
media and media coverage –both electronic and print- to report
distinctive cultural events has been hampering the publicity of the
Sidama’s uniqueness in respect of cultural endowments. Lack of
recognition and publicity in the media world also has a big political
and cultural bearings on the identity of Sidama nation at large.
A Sidama nation has an enormous potential to donate to the global
community. Its true cultures, norms, values, if properly documented and
reported has a lot to aid to the knowledge creation for the peace-loving
international community. Everything what a Sidama nation has is a world
heritage-both tangible and intangible. Its unique new year
Fichee-chambalala celebration is one of the invaluable heritage the
Sidamaland can lend to variety and beauty of world. However, its
uniqueness is not duly and properly served by the national media. The
Ethiopian television is not able to serve the void created by the lack
of freely circulating media atmosphere to report comprehensively on the
cultural life of a society.
Overall, this partly justifies the
Sidama public’s quest for its own TV channel. The Sidama people since
the olden days have been claiming to have their programs transmitted on
the television. The participants of 19th symposium on Sidama language
and culture and Fichee in Sidama cultural hall this year in one voice
urged “let Sidama nation have its own TV channel!”. The question then
is: if the existing media atmosphere is not responsive to the calls of
Cultures of Sidama nation, how long the marginalization should continue?
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