MAURITIUS
By Gilbert Ahnee, Editor, Le Mauricien
24 February 2003

Mauritius: towards total freedom

With a totally free, private owned, printed media, Mauritius has experienced an absolute freedom of the press right from colonial times. As a matter of fact, the first newspaper ever published in Mauritius hit the streets for the first time in 1773, this event's 230th anniversary having been celebrated recently. The tradition of press freedom is one of the most cherished values of the Mauritian people. However, in spite of a relatively 4,200 US $ GDP per capita, a certain slow down in the economy impacted negatively on the advertisement market and the sector needs to remain prudent as regards further investments.

Since 2002, three private radio stations have been licensed, with some incidence on the printed media. These radios are much more outspoken than the public service and, due to the competition between them, treatment of news is becoming more and more superficial, if not outright irresponsible. Newspapers will have, much more than in the past, to posit themselves as providers of documented information and reliable hot news.

The daily market is largely led by Le Mauricien, an evening paper, in its 96th year of existence. However, in terms of audience, its morning competitor, l'express, incepted in the early 60's, also has a fair share, since every single copy of a morning paper, even when less circulated, is read by more people - in the various offices and workshops - than an evening paper which goes straight from the vendor's kiosk to the family home. Considering the above, Le Mauricien's and l'express' commercial tariffs are roughly the same, both products offering, on average, the same exposure to the adverts they carry. The new daily launched, in 1999, Tribune, has closed down.

The weeklies market is largely dominated by the Sunday press, with Week-End (a product of Le Mauricien Ltd), leading that market with nearly 80,000 copies sold out every week. Since the last CPU conference, in 2000, two new weeklies have been launched, L'Hebdo and Financial News, the latter having gained CPU membership last year.

In spite of the perfect freedom the press enjoys in Mauritius, a newspaper fell victim, last year, to a very peculiar form of harassment. The new Sunday weekly L'Hebdo had planned to carry, in its September 8th 2002 issue, a story on a possibly improper attribution of State land to a Minister's self-confessed former mistress. According to police reports, there was an unwarranted intrusion at L'Hebdo's premises, political activists succeeding in their attempt to obstruct the paper's distribution. The gang was led by one Raffick Goolfee, a prominent member of the ruling MMM party. When quizzed by the police, Goolfee said that his initiative was not linked to the damaging story about Minister Ganoo private life but that he was trying to know whether the paper carried another story, one that, according to him, was liable to foment racial hatred. Goolfee has been arrested by the police and, pending judicial process, he is now on bail.