CAMEROON
By Celestin Lingo, Advisor to the GM, Le Messager
24 February 2003
I - PRESENTATION
- A lot of newspapers : 654 titles recorded in 1997.
- Private press : widely dominant Only a daily governmental newspaper and some institutional newspapers.
- Rich and varied press.
- Predominance of the general information press
- Brought up of the institutional press
- Shy specialization of economic and sports press.
II - DIFFICULTIES
Legal:
Law governing press is essentially repressive. Violations of press laws are assimilated to crimes and are punished heavily by the Camaroonian penal code .
- Law acts are scattered and there is no Press code.
- Secret of sources of threatened
- Difficulties to obtain information from the right sources.
Economic:
A part from the media of the State, there is not yet real entreprises of press in Cameroon. On the subject, the private press is at the embryonic level or at the very carly step. Kindly note that, the environment is far to be prosperous : narrowness of market of advertissement, weak buying power of population, limped didtribution networks, enormous costs of raw materials or inputs, high costs of telecommunication and printing etc.
The written press is the core actor of the democratization process in Cameroon. It is unfortunately victim of all sorts of manipulations on behalf of politicians who want to control it.
Distribution:
This constitutes the real problem and the weakest point of the written press in Cameroon. Messapress has the monopoly of distribution in the big urban centers in the country. The network of distribution of Paris is very expensive. Sometimes, it costs more than the half of the price of the news. This leads to the creation of informal networks of distribution. Unfortunately, the majority of population living in rural areas are not reached.
Journalist's statue:
The absence of real entreprises of press has for direct consequence the journalist's precariousness : low remueration, bad conditions of work, no social protection... The situation is of as much more serious than a lot aventurers invade the profession.
