Two Togolese journalists, Ferdinand AYITE and Joel EGAH, were arrested last December, and detained following the publication of a debate on a YouTube channel, before being released on December 31. The main issue discussed in this case is the decriminalisation of press offenses in Togo. Nevertheless, the incriminated facts were committed on youtube, while a recent Togolese law specifies that these facts, if committed on social media, do not fall under the press law, but under the common law.
However, several important issues have not been mentioned in the press. A positive side to this case is that Ferdinand AYITE and Joel EGAH have access to justice in their country. While it may seem paradoxical to see this as a positive development, you have to grasp that US Big Tech companies like Facebook and Twitter censor their social media according to their own rules, and dictate to billions of users what they can and cannot say. Several African leaders have paid the price: Twitter censored the Nigerian president, and Facebook censored the Ethiopian prime minister. Private censorship imposed by American Big Tech supersedes justice - especially African justice - and undermines the digital sovereignty of States.
Thus, as Trace Foundation lobbied the US State Department to put pressure on Togolese institutions, one can legitimately doubt the credibility of the US discourse: how can the US lecture other countries about freedom of expression when the first amendment of the US constitution is being twisted to grant Big Tech the right to censor billions of people in the world and supersede on the justice systems of the rest of the world?
A second issue is the possibility for the press to use social media: in the AYITE case, one of the claims of the press is that the use of these social media by journalists should fall under the press law. In practice, the possibility of using social media allows the economic development of the press, which is of strategic importance for many African states: the example of the Central African Republic shows that the low income of journalists allows foreign entities (in this case Prigozhin's Russian conglomerate) to buy journalists for the purpose of propaganda and deception. Fostering the development of the press online thus strengthens resilience against destabilisation operations by foreign powers.
Another issue is the distinction between journalists and bloggers or vloggers: the problem is not that journalists benefit from press law when using social media, but rather that both journalists and bloggers or citizen journalists should benefit from the same legal protection when using these media. Historically, the development of the Internet has given everyone a possibility that was previously reserved for journalists: to inform the public. Thus nothing can justify that bloggers do not have the same rights as press card holders. A terrible and infamous example is France, where only journalists are allowed to post videos of police brutality on the Internet. The UN Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists is crystal clear: "the protection of journalists should not be limited to those formally recognised as journalists, but should cover others, including community media workers and citizen journalists and others who may be using new media as a means of reaching their audiences."