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Alhamisi, 23 Januari 2014

One of the important Media Act to the constitution of United Republic of Tanzania is The Electronic and postal communication Act number 3/10 of 2010.This Act though it is very important has several impacts to the media of Tanzania. The impacts of this Act can be evaluated in accordance to its sections as follows;

The Act reduces number of media ownership especially private ownership in Tanzania. Example one of the sections which is section number10 which is dealing with Grant of license state that (2) where frequency requirements involved the applicants shall make a separate application for a radio frequency user license. This means the process of obtaining media license and radio frequency user license, the process which discourage people from starting or trying acquiring media license.

The Act also reduce media competition especially due to development of science and technology. The act has some condition which prohibit the media from transmitting or publishing some information which are named as indicent.This means media would leave some information which might be important to the audience. This might cause the audience to search for alternatives in other sources which are not limited such as internet. Example of section deals with this is section number 53 which state that a person shall not send by post any (a)indecent or obscene

printing,painting,photograph,lithograph,ingraving,book or obscene article.
Furthermore the Act goes against one of human rights which is the right to information. Due to limitation in publishment and transmission journalist escape from publishing the so called indecent information.

In addition to that the act gives too much power to the authority against media owners. For example section 22 (b) state that the authority may suspend or cancel a license if the license and authority have agreed in writing to terminate the license.

Also the license ownership is not stable for the media owners. This means any time the license can be terminated as section 21© which deals with suspension and cancellation of license state, that the license terminate up on expire of the terms and is not renewed.

Another impact is that the act relies much to the authority and ignore another side which is media. Example in section number 54 which deals with the authority to make rules dealing with prohibited articles state that the authority may make rules for preventing the sending and delivery of articles prohibited under this Act and detaining disposing of or destroying any such postal article sent or tendered by for transmission by post.

The Act affects sponsorship and advertisement and hence reduce the finance capacity to the media. This is because all advertisement done by the media is under special supervision in accordance to the terms and conditions. The section which deals with this issue is section 109 which deals with advertising and sponsorship. The section state that without derogating from the generality of power of the authority to make rules pertaining the advertising and sponsorship of such rules it may include the following provisions;
(a)Prohibiting, restricting or regulating advertisement of specified goods, products, services, activities,prohibiting,restricting or regulating specified forms and methods of advertising and sponsorship.
(b)Prohibiting,restricting,or otherwise regulating political advertising. All these and the remainder of section 109 give the evidence that sponsorship and advertising is not done but under special conditions and terms to be followed and instead it might cause problem to the media pertaining the license.

Also the Act protect the president from being published negatively and reduce one of the important function of mass media which is Acting as a gate keeper. One of the sections which gives such power to the president is section number 59 which is about power of the president in emergency or in the national or public interest. The section state that (1) the president may on occurrence of any event which gives rise to an emergence or in the interest of national or public security authorize the authority to (a) suspend the public postal license of postal licensee and take temporary possession of any post office under the control of any such licensee.(b)Withdraw either totally or partially the use of any postal service from any person or class of person or from the public at large.

That is on one side of the impact, on the other side the act have some positive impact whereby it helps the media to be responsible and stand to the ethics. In order to avoid any possibility of suspension and withdraw of the license, media owners are making sure that there is not any indecent posted or transmitted to their media.

It helps also to control the market and media competition due to the fact that it reduces number if media owners hence avoiding too much media in the market. By doing that it helps the owners to maintaining the existing and avoid banklupse.

In conclusion the Act requires any one who makes an offence to be punished by paying the amount of money which has not specified. This punishment seem to give the chance for the media to make some offence by having confidence that if anything bad happens they are just paying the money and the case is finished. This can be seen in section number 155 which deals with power of the authority to compound certain offence which state that, Where a person commit an offence under this Act, the director general may, at any time prior to the commencement of court proceeding;(a)compound the offence other than offences related to theft fraud, forgery and other similar offence and (b)order the person to pay a sum of money specified by the director general but not exceeding the amount of the fine prescribed by the offenses .

















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