Misleading Story on Charles Mbire’s relationship with late Vogue Italia Editor Ms. Franca Sozzani

From the ancient of days, journalism was designed to disseminate factual, balanced and well researched stories for the good of humanity. Unfortunately, this powerful profession, a tool that was supposed to be used responsibly has found its way into the hands of some unprofessional individuals who use their media outlets to malign others by distorting facts.

The story trending on The Ugandan News Website titled; “Charles Mbire’s Italian ‘wife’ Ms Sozzani dead” is one such stories that depict irresponsible journalism. In 2012, when Ms Sozzani came to Uganda she was on a mission in Africa to help build entrepreneurial capacity. She teamed up with Mr. Charles Mbire- The Chairman MTN Uganda on a project to help Ugandan Entrepreneurs build their export capacity and indeed the relationship was purely at that level.

The Ugandan website story is therefore not only false to state that she was married to Mr Mbire but also designed to distort a true philanthropic spirit which Mr. Mbire initiated by joining hand with Ms Sozzani to help build capacity in Uganda.

Mr. Charles Mbire states that this kind of insinuation is also bad for future efforts along the same line and in bad taste to the efforts that Ms Sozzani made to help Uganda. “The authors of this unfounded piece of news should know that it’s very un-Ugandan to disrespect the dead, especially those who had us at heart”, he adds.