House of Prayer Ministries International’s Pastor Aloysius Bugingo has slammed the Vision Group for carrying what he dismissed “as deliberate fake misleading” news in its flagship title the New Vision yet much more is expected of them being the state-owned newspaper. Bugingo said whereas it’s a business that must compete with all the other media outlets, the Vision Group has the appropriate resources to overlook mediocrity and do very good job and set standards on which the rest of the news outlets can be measured. Saying he was appalled by the 12th February New Vision lead story which showed 20 pastors are being investigated for rape, Bugingo said it was disappointing he and many others bought the newspaper only to find inside the story only one Pastor, Augustine Yiga Abizayo, was being referred to. “In the details there was nothing yet the headline was deliberately very alarming and it misled many people. This is irresponsible journalism which no nobody ever expected to be carried in the national newspaper moreover owned by the state,” Bugingo told millions of his Emisingi program listeners and viewers on both Salt radio and TV. He claimed such stories were calculated to demonize the Pentecostal churches and provide justification for Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo and Dr. Joseph Serwadda who want to cripple the church of Christ by coming up with a new policy aimed at locking out popular transformational pastors who may lack the new requirement of having a diploma in Theology. Claiming there is a syndicate between Serwadda and some individual actors at Vision Group, Bugingo wondered why the Ndeeba Victory Church boss was aware of everything before the paper came out. “But God has really deserted Dr. Serwadda because even his own members on the whatsapp group are spying for us because they are tired of him though very terrified to speak out. They brought me the whatsapp chats showing the jubilant mood Serwadda was in the day that false story calling Yiga 20 pastors came out,” Bugingo said vowing not to give up but go down fighting to defend less prolific pastors who he says Dr. Serwadda wants to conscript in his Born Again Federation (BAFFE). As if agreeing with Tamale Mirundi, Bugingo predicted time was coming with the readers would ignore New Vision and begin shunning it as unserious like any other Ugandan newspaper. “I’m still wondering what has happened to media ethics for a national paper with well-defined duties and obligations to come up with such a very deceptive headline in all in the name of duping the public to buy,” said Bugingo himself a proprietor of Salt Media, one of Uganda’s fastest growing news organizations. The colleagues/fellow pastors he had in the studio all agreed such a deceptive headline was too low for an entity like New Vision. Bugingo said, unlike government officials who daily get free copies, readers like him should be respected by being given accurate news because they daily part with Shs2,000 to be availed a copy.
