International media is
often criticised for reporting only stories about the negatives of Africa, with
most of these stories hammering on themes like poverty, hunger, violence,
corruption just to name a few (Chavis 1998). The million dollar question is
here is: is the western media, biased or the way our continent is being shown
on the international media, the true reflection of what is happening?
Africa is the second largest
continent, in terms of landmass and population and is the richest in natural
resources ranging from diversity in flora and fauna, different minerals,
abundant sunshine, rich diversity in culture, lingua franca and ethnic groups
and tribes.
Despite all these
wonderful things, Africa continues to be the poorest, in terms of economic and
technological development in comparison with other continents. Though all these
noted above are realities, it is the determination and selection of news and
information production driven by the insatiable economic and profit driven
interest of the capitalist west which most of the time, makes room for the
stereotyping of Africa by western media.
WESTERN
MEDIA STEREOTYPING
The question of African
journalist correcting western media stereotyping cannot be answered
satisfactorily without understanding the key phrases such as ‘western media’
and ‘media stereotyping’.
Western media is the
category of media channels such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines
found in nations of the developed west such as the United States, Britain,
France, Japan, and Canada. media stereotyping is a technique that ‘attempts’ to
arouse prejudices in an audience by labelling the object of propaganda campaign
as something the target audience fears,hates,mocks or finds undesirable. These
media stereotypes of the west become so common that they form daily thoughts,
perceptions and opinions that usually prevent people from looking beyond them.
These media messages, beamed by the global media gurus often connote something
negative and in most cases, portray Africa and Africans as backward,inferior,primitive
or subhuman.
With a stroke of the pen,
western media journalist look down on the life ways of more than 700 million
people in fifty-four countries; reducing them to nothing other than a place of
disease,savagery,animism,famine and starvation,polilitical instability, abject poverty
and the like. They do this through media giants like the Cable News network
(CNN),British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC),Agence France press (AFP),Reuters and other international media.
African journalist do
not deny the fact that these things, shown about Africa is real but the way
these negatives are given prominence when it comes to news about Africa is a
cause for concern (Alam,1994 cited in Mahadeo & McKinney,2007). the media
of the developed western nations often show shanty towns like Kibera in Kenya,
barren landscapes in places like Somalia and Niger to explain famine and
hunger; malnourished-lean children with flies on their
faces and their stomach extended in Darfur
queuing for food hand-outs while the developed western nations are shown in
these media as benevolent donors of food aid without any mention of the
exploitation of our natural resources including land meant for farming food
crops used by business moguls of the west for cash crop production such as palm
oil etc. to feed industries of the west (Chavis,1998).Land annexation for such
purposes are recorded in countries such as Kenya, South Africa due to apartheid
and Zimbabwe (Mahedo &McKinney,2007).
On the other hand, the
western media create the impression of Africa at war in which they cite tribalism,
“democratic deficit” and political instability brought about by frequent coup
de tats and election violence as a major cause, often ignoring the problem of
resource competition created as a result of exploitation by the imperialist,
superimposed western forms of governance which at times proves unsuitable and
states like Botswana, Morocco and Senegal who had not experienced any overthrow
of power therefore escaping detailed explanation; infact,not much time is
devoted to the underlying causes which intensifies and encourages the canker
(cohen,2001 in Manzo 2006 cited in Mahadeo & McKinney,2007).
A case in point is the
Kenyan post-election violence in 2008. Jacobs (2013), emphatically, states that
Reuters News Agency, a British based international media house, reported the
violence as a ‘tribal bloodletting’; which in the true sense was violence
between supporters of the two political factions of Mwai Kibaki and Raila
Odinga. Philo (2002) cited in Mahado &McKinney (2007), also refers to this impression,
in his research into international media coverage of the Rwandan genocide. He
further explains that, contrary to what the western media perceived Rwanda was
a much disciplined and peaceful society until the arrival of its colonial
masters-the Belgians: who through their colonial policies sowed discords of
ethnocentrism and exhibited ‘divide and rule’ attitude between Hutus and Tutsis
which resulted in a terrible genocide in 1994.
Furthermore, western
media giants like the BBC, CNN, France24, and vital magazine the have given
extensive coverage to armed conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Somalia
and Mali. They particularly stressed on the issue of mineral resources like
diamonds used to finance some of these conflicts whiles giving little coverage
on western business giants like de beers and van de kaap who during these wars
years of Liberia and sierra Leone were known to be secretly and indirectly patronizing
these ‘blood diamonds’ from warlords and rebels in which they sometimes offered
weapons of war in return. The BBC for example, were quick to report about the
gross abuse of human rights especially the amputations during this period but
made little mention of the Chinese made machetes that were used to foster this
barbaric act.
On the political front,
African governments, states institutions portrayed as corrupt, are well hyped
in the media of the west; with some of our elites who do not tow western
interest labelled as dictators meanwhile, evidence of some western nations such
as the United states a supposed ‘beacon’ of democracy sponsoring certain
corrupt and dictatorial regimes just to promote their economic interest are
rarely mentioned by these international media of these elite nations.
In the economic sphere,
western media reportage in many cases equated Africa with abject poverty. Quite
recently, the western media directed it focus on debts owed by African countries.
Popular phrase used by western journalists were ‘debt forgiveness’ and ‘highly
indebted poor countries’. This, in my opinion are patronizing phrases which masquerades
the dubious activities of western financial institutions who sometimes lend
money for dubious projects on unrealistic terms, knowing fully that repayment
will be difficult. This is however well documented but not said in the western media.
Examples are the jubilee 2000/drop the debt and HIPC initiative (Jacobs, 2013).
All this argument above
is summed up in the statement of a journalist and economic analyst in Kampala,
Uganda: “In order for Africa to governments to get foreign aid, the continent
needs to be seen as a place of hardship. ‘Bad governments’, especially needs a
bad image to go begging in the west”. This statement, made by him is somewhat a
justification of western media stereotyping.
On a more serious note,
media establishments of the west usually show Africa as a continent ridden with
HIV and AIDS. Early research into the opinions about the origin of these
disease have pointed its fingers at no other continent than Africa because it
has recorded very high spreading and infection levels of this disease in countries
such as Swaziland, south Africa,Zimbabwe,Kenya and Nigeria.also,subsequent
research helped to justify this assertion that indeed HIV-AIDS originated from
Africa. Eg.DNA studies done in democratic Republic of Congo of a man who died
of AIDS IN 1959.
In this way, the
western media is able to convince their consumers in the Metropolis that
HIV and AIDS is ‘natural’ to Africa yet
they forget that these countries recording high rates of infections are hotspot tourist destinations of people mainly from the
west who transports hidden diseases from their countries to Africa during vacations.
They patronize prostitutes and come into contact with people who can fall
victims to new diseases as a result of viral and bacterial infections. still on
the aids issue, the BBC Reported on the BBC Africa programme that a third of
south Africans believe in the bizarre ‘cure’ of aids in which it is widely
believed that having sex with a virgin is a cure for AIDS.to justify this new
story, the incident where an HIV Positive man raped an eight months old baby
received a status of a ‘top story’ from Africa.
Our responsibility, as
African journalist, to correct these stereotypes of the western media is huge but
possible though we don’t have the financial capacity to do so. One effective
way we can do this as African journalist is to do more stories on the positives
of our beloved continent.
In our news making,films,documentaries,journals
and so on we should sell our rich cultural diversity, showcase our beautiful
natural environment, propagate intensively our proud history to the world to
correct the long held popular notion of
Africa as a homogeneous entity or as the same people, the continent being a
wild jungle and Africans living on trees etc. because like the Europeans, our cultures,
languages and ethnicity varies from one another and the west should treat us as
separate entities in their policies for Africa (Michira,2002)
In this age of
information communication technology, we as African journalist should take the
maximum opportunity to use this platform to that effect. All these can be done
if we as African journalist make a conscious effort to learn more of ourselves
and our history in order to counter the media stereotypes of the west.
REFERENCES
Mahedeo M. & McKinney
J.; “Media representation of Africa: still the same old story”? In policy and
practice. A development education review
(2007) vol.4 available: http//www.developmenteducationreview.com/issue
4-focus.2
Michira J.; “Images of Africa in the western media
(2002) available:http//www.teachingliterature.org/.../pdf/…/images-of-africa-michira.pdf
Jacobs S.; “Mukoma Wa Ngugi:
The western journalist in Africa” 2013 available:
http//www.africasacountry.com/2013/03/12/the western-journalist-in-africa.
