Airport Presser
By Dickson Jere
One of my greatest failures as presidential press aide was the failure to stop the President from taking those spot-interviews at the airport. I tried but failed lamentably!
In 2014, I wrote in my book – Inside the Presidency – the following on page 62;
“Firstly, those interviews were spontaneous and unfocused. It was difficult to manage or prepare the President for them.
Secondly, the press habitually asked questions that riled the President. When I worked as a reporter, we used to agree to ask the President sticky questions at the airport so that he had no escape. That was my reason for opposing them.
I had agreed with the security to allow only photojournalists to cover the President as he boarded the plane. No interviews. But I failed on that front. The President himself breached my gag order. He stopped for spot interviews and later saying he felt sorry for the reporters who had camped at the airport for hours, at times in the scorching heat.
“Nanvwa chifundo (I felt sorry for them),” the President used to tell me after stopping to speak with reporters.
In my view, those interviews used to be a disaster. At times, the President lost his cool and overreacted to some questions. It was fodders for many. The clip beamed on television portraying the President as temperamental when the opposite was the truth…
And the blame for such ‘blow-ups’ was put squarely on my shoulder. I was failing to manage the President with airport interviews…
Sometimes the President himself agreed with me that the press was overstepping their limits by asking him silly questions when he was allowed himself to be interviewed…”
Some good lessons here from the archives.
Sometimes statements can be distorted depending on the context. Remember Late President Levy Mwanawasa had difficulties to explain what he meant about “Bembas” when it was taken out of context to say he said “Bembas were dirty and corrupt”?
Context is always important.