Miss Catherine scribbled words after words on a notebook. Halfway, she tears it off, squeezes and throws it into a trash can nearby. With the weight of the censorship from the director of media and communications, she was at the verge of breaking.

“ Freedom of the press is an illusion, Simon. People are dying in these villages. The water is polluted. Their source of living is gone. I report it once and hell is breaking loose on me.”

Simon tried to calm the twenty-five year-old, whose enthusiasm had received a punch like a deflated balloon. Catherine questioned what she should report, and what she shouldn't. Reality was beginning to contradict all she learnt in school.

Her courage wavered. Four years of journalistic training was going down the drain before her eyes.

Her editor maintained there was nothing she could do. The fines they might face was too heavy. Not to mention that the government was taking several subtle moves to gag the operations of private media houses. Between losing their licence and laying off a newbie, they chose the former.

" You can't fight them alone," Simon tried to dissuade her, but in that line of words, he laid a strategy for her.

" A government of the people, for the people and by the people." She muttered, feeling a gush of inspiration. She concluded. To retrieve her liberty, she must draw the power from the people and the constitution.

Her next publication earned her the wrath of some godfathers in the country. Her adventure into investigative journalism had brought the public lens on an organised looting.

Her licence as a freelancer was at risk, but the difference was her mindset. Catherine was determined they will not shut her up. 

“ You forget something, honourable minister. The Press is the fourth estate of this realm. You and I are public servants and I will hold everyone of you accountable.”

Simon was there to see her off from the closed door meeting. He marvelled at her courage. The unyielding spirit. Most importantly, he finally understood journalism was the only bridge between service and accountability. 

There was no doubt Catherine's life was in danger. She knew, yet it is a path she accepted from the time of her admission into Jackson college of Journalism. However, experience had refined her. This time, she was the watchdog at the gates, not the puppet.