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BUHERE: Journalism has ignored writing on public service

They hardly report on the foundations, structures, organisation and management of these institutions.

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by Josephine Mayuya

Opinion08 January 2024 - 03:30

In Summary


  • They hardly report on the foundations, structures, organisation and management of these institutions.
  • These are not static or dead issues. They are dynamic.

Media houses have dedicated pages to cover important public policy areas such as the economy, sports and education on a daily if not weekly basis. Some of them have assigned reporters and columnists who have specialised in some of these issues.

I particularly commend leading media houses for allocating space to these three areas as they ably meet the informational needs of the audiences interested in them.

Perhaps all the media houses need to do is strengthen the dockets and support the reporters who cover the issues to improve citizens' understanding—so they can develop informed attitudes to the policy actions around the issues.

But one cannot say media houses have given their time, energy and resources to covering the public service or the public administration system. This is the institution that formulates and implements policies on some of the public policy issues they have given their time, energy and resources to report.

Nor have media houses identified experts on public administration to write about the organisation and management of public sector institutions.

Public administration is a subdiscipline in political science that focuses on the study of public policies, their implementation, and the organisation and management of public sector institutions.

This is strange. It is strange that the media are adept at reporting on the policies, programmes, projects, initiatives and activities of government through its various ministries, departments and agencies, but have not taken pains to report on their institutional foundations, structures, organisation, management and perpetuity.

The nearest media houses come to report on the public service systems is when employees are either receiving enhanced remunerations or threatening or withholding their labour when they are not happy. The other area of interest is when an institution is getting new leadership or the leadership gets into trouble over one issue or the other.

They hardly report on the foundations, structures, organisation and management of these institutions. These are not static or dead issues. They are dynamic.

We have specialised institutions particularly established to address the purposes, foundations, structures and management of the public administration. They also exist to provide the human resources that are critical to the functioning of these institutions.

They ensure the entering blood have the initial quantum of intellect and technical know-how relevant to the institutions, induct them into the culture of the organisation and provide training for all tiers of employees on technical aspects of the institution.

Later, and in the fullness of time, they provide training to those identified for leadership positions, subject to experiential exposure to the workings and dynamics of the institutions for which they have worked.

The specialised institutions in question are involved in the reorganisation or reform of the institutions to make them more resilient in coping with and managing changing expectations, values and demands of the citizens by dint of change in systems of government, change in government, change in technology and other variables.

Bureaucracy, although permanent, is and must be responsive to internal and external forces. Its capacity, resilience and agility—in terms of technical, administrative and leadership—are critical to the success of any government.

These are exciting things to report on—be it for hard news, features and the human elements in public administration.

I don’t see any media house that has invested in reporting on this aspect of government. Reporting cases of corruption is good—the principles of accountability and integrity are critical to the effective and efficient management of public affairs.

However, issues of appointment of personnel into top leadership in public institutions and labour issues concerning public servants are a tiny aspect of public administration. It is a speck.

A public affairs reporter would like to know, for example, whether change from the parliamentary system of government to the presidential system of government has had any substantial effect on public administration. What changes were made to adjust to this system of government?

That media houses or journalists have not found anything worthy of reporting or researching in this area is baffling. Baffling to my “news sense” and an affront to my study of political science—called simply government—in my undergraduate days.


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