{"id":242246,"date":"2026-08-26T08:26:55","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T06:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zambia\/zambians-call-for-freedom-and-a-watchdog-role-for-the-media\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T08:26:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T06:26:55","slug":"zambians-call-for-freedom-and-a-watchdog-role-for-the-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/southern-africa\/zambia\/zambians-call-for-freedom-and-a-watchdog-role-for-the-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Zambians Call for Freedom and a Watchdog Role for the Media"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"15\">Most citizens say information about government budgets and contracts should be accessible to the public.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"2\">Key findings<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Three-quarters (76%) of Zambians say the media should &#8220;constantly investigate and report on government mistakes and corruption.&#8221; Only 20% believe that &#8220;too much reporting on negative events only harms the country.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>A clear majority (65%) of respondents insist on media freedom, though 33% endorse a government right to prevent the publication of material it disapproves of.<\/li>\n<li>Seven in&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202608260080.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 Southern Africa <a title=\"Zambia\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/southern-africa\/zambia\/\">Zambia<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most citizens say information about government budgets and contracts should be accessible to the public. Key findings Three-quarters (76%) of Zambians say the media should &#8220;constantly investigate and report on government mistakes and corruption.&#8221; Only 20% believe that &#8220;too much reporting on negative events only harms the country.&#8221; A clear majority (65%) of respondents insist [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":242247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[825],"tags":[258,256,6880,7636,4959,257,8225,254,22038,881,9005],"class_list":["post-242246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-zambia","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-call","tag-freedom","tag-media","tag-news","tag-role","tag-south-africa-today","tag-watchdog","tag-zambia-news","tag-zambians"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}