No newspapers were published in Senegal on Tuesday while television and radio broadcasts went dark as media organisations called a national blackout to protest threats to press freedom, notably from newly installed Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko.
The Senegalese Council of Press Distributors and Publishers (CDEPS) said that freedom of the press was threatened in Senegal in an editorial published on Monday.
"For nearly three months the Senegalese press has experienced one of the darkest phases of its history," the organisation of editors of both private and public media companies wrote.
It said the media blackout was to call attention to threats including the "freezing of bank accounts" of media companies for non-payment of tax, the "seizure of production equipment", or the "unilateral and illegal termination of advertising contracts" with the government.
Sonko, who took office in early April, has denounced what he called the "misappropriation of public funds" in the sector, alleging some media chiefs were failing to pay social security contributions.
Threat to the sector
The government’s “hostile acts” against media organisations pose a threat to the sector, CDEPS president Mamadou Ibra Kane told RFI. “Today the situation is that most media companies are nearly bankrupt.”
At the end of last month, the company behind two of the most widely read sports dailies suspended publication after more than 20 years due to economic difficulties.
Media organisations had hoped the new government would help find solutions out of the crisis, “but unfortunately this is not the case,” Kane said.
“On the contrary, by trying to asphyxiate, economically and financially, private media, the new government thinks it can create new media to spread their positions,” he added, nothing that dismantling critical media is “a threat to freedom of the press and freedom of expression”.
Control of information
In late June Sonko said news outlets were writing whatever they wished without reliable sources in the name of press freedom – comments which many in the media took as a threat.
"The aim is none other than the control of information and the taming of media professionals," the CDEPS said.
"We are seasoned enough to have experienced the methods of previous powers to understand what is happening."
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has urged Senegal's new president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, to take action to promote press freedom after three years of arrests and violence against journalists under the presidency of Macky Sall.
Senegal is in 94th place on the group's world press freedom index, having slipped down from 49th place in 2021.
