CRTV MUST EXPLAIN ITSELF: WHEN A STATE CONTROLS THE CAMERA, IT CONTROLS THE NARRATIVE, A Nation Cannot Be Governed Through Edited Fragments

CRTV must explain itself—not because every restriction proves wrongdoing, but because public trust requires answers when enormous resources are deployed to document an event and the public is nevertheless shown so little. The camera may be operated by the broadcaster. But the broadcaster is funded in the name of the public. The story belongs to the people. And truth should never depend upon how narrowly someone chooses to frame the camera.

By Lester Maddox
Guest Contributor
The Independentist News
Oakland, California

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Two Hundred Staff, Yet So Little to See

YAOUNDÉ – 24 August 2026 – There is something profoundly unsettling about a national broadcaster mounting an enormous technical operation to cover the return of President Paul Biya after more than two months away from the country, only for citizens to receive carefully selected fragments of the event.

Reports indicate that CRTV mobilised nearly 200 staff members, satellite equipment, mobile control facilities and Camtel fibre links for the presidential return. Yet after all that preparation and public expenditure, the visual record presented to Cameroonians appeared remarkably limited. The image that lingered was not a comprehensive picture of a head of state returning after an unusually prolonged absence, but fragments—most memorably, a hand appearing through a car window.

That contrast between the scale of the operation and the narrowness of the broadcast is not a trivial broadcasting complaint. It raises a legitimate public-interest question: what happened between the extraordinary resources deployed to document the President’s return and the restricted picture ultimately delivered to the citizens who financed those resources? CRTV should answer that question.

A Public Broadcaster Has a Public Obligation

The issue becomes even more important when viewed against Cameroon’s broader information environment. CRTV is not merely another television station competing for viewers. As the state broadcaster, it enjoys privileged access to events, institutions and officials that independent journalists may not obtain. Its cameras can enter spaces ordinary reporters cannot. Its correspondents can accompany official delegations. Its infrastructure gives it nationwide reach.

Privileges create corresponding obligations.

CRTV cannot enjoy the access, resources and authority of a national public institution while appearing to operate primarily as a mechanism for protecting the image of those who govern. A public broadcaster’s first responsibility should be to inform citizens sufficiently for them to form their own judgments. There is a fundamental difference between government communication and journalism. Government communication tells citizens what government wants them to know. Journalism gives citizens enough verified information to decide for themselves what events mean.

When the State Controls the Camera

This is where the issue becomes larger than the quality of one presidential broadcast. When a government controls access to an event, determines who may enter, restricts independent recording and simultaneously controls the principal official broadcast, citizens become heavily dependent on the editorial decisions of institutions connected to that same government. Then what is shown matters. But what is not shown matters too.

What was interrupted matters. What was excluded matters. What officials classified as technical matters. What journalists were permitted to record matters. Whether restrictions originated with television producers, presidential security or political authorities matters.

Asking such questions is not hostility toward the state. In any system that claims public accountability, these are exactly the questions citizens should be permitted to ask. The reported mobilisation of nearly 200 CRTV staff makes the matter harder to dismiss. Staff time, transport, satellite facilities, production equipment and fibre connectivity represent public resources. Citizens therefore have a reasonable right to know what those resources produced.

If there were technical failures, CRTV can explain them. If there were legitimate security restrictions, it can explain their general nature without compromising presidential security. If limitations were imposed by the Presidency or security services, that too can be acknowledged without revealing operational details. What should not happen is for citizens to be left guessing.

Security Restrictions May Be Legitimate—Secrecy Is Another Matter

The subsequent reception of the Indomitable Lionesses at the Unity Palace adds another dimension. Reports that personal phones were restricted inside the presidential complex may have a perfectly legitimate security explanation. Presidential facilities around the world impose restrictions on electronic devices, and there is nothing inherently suspicious about such precautions. But context matters.

When citizens are already questioning the scarcity of independent imagery surrounding a President who has been absent for an extended period, another tightly controlled presidential event will inevitably attract scrutiny. If members of the public and guests cannot independently record an event, the burden upon the official broadcaster becomes greater—not smaller.

If the public cannot record it, the public broadcaster should make a greater effort to show it. The point is not that every restriction proves concealment. It does not. The point is that greater control requires greater transparency if public confidence is to be maintained.

CRTV Does Not Belong to the Presidency

This distinction is essential. CRTV does not belong personally to Paul Biya. It does not belong to the Presidency. It does not belong to the ruling party. It is a national broadcasting institution supported by public resources and serving a public audience. Its journalists undoubtedly operate within institutional and security constraints. But the principle remains: the national broadcaster should inform the nation rather than merely reproduce the preferred image of the government of the day.

When public broadcasting becomes indistinguishable from political image management, the institution gradually loses the very credibility that makes it useful to the state and valuable to the citizen.

Transparency, by contrast, protects credibility.

If the President’s return was entirely routine, comprehensive and appropriate imagery would help establish that.If there were genuine technical failures, explaining them would reduce speculation. If security considerations restricted certain images, explaining the general basis would help citizens distinguish legitimate confidentiality from unnecessary secrecy. The public does not need every classified detail. It needs enough credible information to understand why it was shown so little.

Why This Matters Especially to Ambazonians

For Ambazonians, the question of who controls the camera has never been merely about television. It is about who controls the narrative. Throughout the conflict involving Southern Cameroons–Ambazonia and La République du Cameroun, competing narratives have existed over history, political legitimacy, military operations, civilian casualties, arrests, displacement, repression and the causes of the conflict.

Official institutions have frequently framed events using the language of “crisis,” “separatism,” “terrorism” or “security operations,” while Ambazonian political and historical arguments have struggled to obtain comparable space within the state-controlled information system. This does not mean every CRTV report is false. It does not mean every CRTV journalist acts in bad faith. And it does not mean every Ambazonian account should automatically be accepted as accurate.

The deeper problem is structural. When one side to a profound political dispute controls the dominant national broadcasting machinery, controls much of the official access and possesses vastly greater resources for transmitting its interpretation of events, the information battlefield is unequal before the argument even begins. That should concern anyone who values evidence, regardless of political position.

The State Should Not Become the Sole Narrator

The people of Ambazonia have their own account of the political arrangements preceding the current conflict, their own interpretation of the relationship with La République du Cameroun and their own understanding of the events that transformed political grievances into armed confrontation. Others profoundly disagree with those interpretations.

Responsible journalism should make room for competing claims to be examined against evidence rather than allowing any state institution to become the unquestioned narrator of everybody’s history. An international audience should not assume that an official account is automatically a complete account merely because it comes from a recognised state broadcaster.

Nor should an Ambazonian account be accepted merely because it challenges Yaoundé. The answer to state propaganda cannot be opposition propaganda. The answer must be evidence, independent journalism, competing sources and the right of citizens to see enough information to make their own judgments.

The Digital Age Has Changed the Information Battlefield

The old model of information control is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. A government may control its television cameras, but it cannot control every smartphone. It may restrict journalists inside a presidential venue, but it cannot prevent every witness from speaking. It may issue an official statement, but it cannot guarantee that citizens will accept it without question.

Every unexplained interruption produces another question. Every missing image encourages citizens to search for another source. Every apparent contradiction between official statements and independent accounts drives people toward alternative information networks. Ironically, excessive control can therefore weaken the very institution it is intended to protect. The more people believe they are being shown only what authorities want them to see, the more determined they become to find what they believe has been withheld.

That does not necessarily produce truth. Sometimes it produces rumour, manipulated imagery and misinformation. That is precisely why official transparency matters. Credible information is one of the strongest defences against speculation. Citizens Are No Longer Passive Viewers There is also a generational reality that governments cannot ignore.

Today’s Cameroonians do not inhabit the media environment of previous decades. They compare television reports with social media videos. They communicate with relatives abroad. They watch foreign broadcasters. They receive footage directly from witnesses. They examine dates, photographs, camera angles and inconsistencies. The citizen is no longer merely a consumer of information. The citizen has become a participant in its production, comparison and verification. Public institutions must adapt.

Credibility can no longer be demanded merely because an institution carries the title “national broadcaster.” It must be earned. And credibility is earned most effectively when citizens believe the broadcaster is prepared to show uncomfortable realities as faithfully as favourable ones.

The Questions CRTV Should Answer

There is therefore nothing unreasonable about asking CRTV to explain the presidential-return coverage. How many personnel were deployed? What technical equipment was mobilised? What was the intended scope of coverage? Were there technical failures? Were security restrictions imposed? Who controlled the final broadcast feed? Were cameras prevented from filming particular areas? Were journalists instructed to avoid particular images?

Were interruptions caused by equipment failure, security decisions or editorial direction? And why did the public receive such limited imagery despite the reported scale of the operation? These are not hostile questions. They are accountability questions. And CRTV should answer them publicly.

Unanswered Questions Become Narratives

The President’s return therefore gives CRTV an opportunity. It can dismiss public questions as politically motivated and allow speculation to grow. Or it can demonstrate that a publicly funded broadcaster has nothing to fear from transparency. It can explain what happened. It can distinguish technical problems from security restrictions. It can explain what it was permitted to broadcast and what it was not. It can clarify whether limitations arose from editorial decisions or instructions from elsewhere.

Such disclosure would not weaken CRTV. It would strengthen it. The alternative is silence. And unanswered questions have a way of becoming narratives of their own. You May Control the Camera, But Not Permanently the Story The larger lesson reaches beyond CRTV.

A government that controls the camera, controls access to official venues, dominates the national broadcaster and manages the release of official information possesses enormous power over public perception. That power should be exercised with restraint. Information is not merely entertainment. It shapes what citizens believe happened, whom they trust, what they fear and how they understand their country. But there are limits to information control.

You may control the official camera, but you cannot permanently control what people believe. You may restrict one image, but you cannot erase every witness. You may dominate one broadcast, but you cannot prevent citizens from asking what happened outside the frame. And the tighter the frame becomes, the more significant the missing space may appear.

The Answer Is Not Another Propaganda Machine For Ambazonians, that lesson should be particularly important. When the state becomes author, editor, broadcaster and final authority over its own account of a political conflict, the public must remain vigilant. But Ambazonian media should also learn the corresponding lesson. The answer to a controlled state narrative is not to manufacture an equally controlled opposition narrative.

The Independentist journalism should demand of itself the same standards it demands of CRTV: evidence, attribution, corrections when necessary, separation of fact from allegation and enough intellectual honesty to acknowledge inconvenient information. Otherwise, one propaganda system merely replaces another. A people seeking political freedom should also seek freedom from manipulation. A Nation Cannot Be Governed Through Edited Fragments

The controversy surrounding CRTV therefore extends far beyond a presidential arrival, a car window or a handful of missing images. It concerns the kind of information society Cameroon intends to become. Will citizens be trusted with enough reality to make their own judgments? Or will institutions decide how much reality citizens are permitted to see?

The answer matters to every Cameroonian. It matters especially to people whose political history and present grievances have long been narrated primarily through institutions controlled by the state with which they are in dispute. A nation cannot be governed through edited fragments. A people cannot build trust upon carefully selected images. And a government confident in the truth should not fear allowing citizens to see it.

CRTV must explain itself—not because every restriction proves wrongdoing, but because public trust requires answers when enormous resources are deployed to document an event and the public is nevertheless shown so little. The camera may be operated by the broadcaster. But the broadcaster is funded in the name of the public. The story belongs to the people. And truth should never depend upon how narrowly someone chooses to frame the camera.

As Amazon associate this site earns from qualifying purchases

Its back to school on Amazon check out

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=back+to+school&crid=3RPWOE458PDIV&sprefix=Back%2Caps%2C2724&linkCode=ll2&tag=njokings-20&linkId=93a48461210b1ff8eae75575f80f0e92&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Lester Maddox
Guest Contributor
The Independentist News
Oakland, California