The Image of Africa in the West from an African perspective and how the West is being portrayed in the African media landscape.

INTRODUCTION

I have been reflecting on the topic above since I was asked to write this piece and In my preparations I kept saying to myself this is a tired topic, this has been overdone, there is nothing fresh about this. Then I was hit by the second half of the subject, “….How is the West being portrayed in the African media landscape?” Now that is a new bone to chew on, a question that is not often asked. A problem that when analyzed thoroughly will get to the very core of the inherent challenges faced by the media on the continent. The challenges that in my opinion have a great impact on the first part of the statement above, “The Image of Africa in the West from an African perspective……?”

Now let me not get ahead of myself let me do the right things first and contextualize this piece.

1. I am not an academic, just a practitioner who has been in this industry for nearly two decades in various capacities. So I will be looking at this through the eyes of an industry player.
2. Before I am criticized of behaving like the Western media in the generalization of Africa, let us remind ourselves that Africa is not one homogeneous country but a number of states and people that are varied and different, and my examples may be more relevant in my home country Ghana.
3. My criticism of the Western media should not be taken to mean that I am advocating a whitewash of African stories, and that I want journalist to throw out their principles in order to portray the continent in a good light. I just want journalist to go back to the basics- Objective reportage.

Ex Africa semper aliquid novi [Always something new out of Africa]")

The statement above by the author Pliny the Elder encapsulates the relationship the West has had with Africa for centuries.  According to the National Geographic News, the Greek word that means new has a different connotation….. For the ancient Greeks and Latins, the word 'new' tended to have negative connotations, associated with something strange or undesirable."

These ideas persisted through the ages and are captured in several European writings. Let me share an example of one of the best sellers in 13^th century Europe that reinforces Pliny the Elders ideas and gives a hint of the sweeping generalisations in the coverage of Africa till today. According to The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, a book account of the supposed travels of an English Knight.

…the whole of Africa is Mauritania, and folk of that country be called Moors, still others have a foot so large it shadoweth the body against the sun; in the southern parts one finds people with no heads, their eyes be in their shoulders". This book acquired extraordinary popularity from when it begun circulating between 1357 and 1371 and it was translated into many European languages. In spite of the extremely unreliable and often fantastical nature of the travels it describes, it was used as a work of reference by none other than Christopher Columbus.

From Pliny the elders’ statement about a “barbaric” Africa, through the missionaries quest to liberate savages, Newsreels from conquering colonial power, popular fiction like Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness, Children’ stories like Tarzan and Hollywood movies, an image of Africa has taken shape over the centuries in the West.

 The mass media since its inception tends to mirror the cultural stereotypes that have shaped a society’s mind through its popular culture. So from the famines of Ethiopia and Somalia through the wars of Sudan, the genocides in Rwanda and the post election disturbances in Kenya and Zimbabwe, the news coming out of the West has mostly fallen into the categories of “a strange spectacle” or a place where “undesirable things take place.”The outcome is an image of a continent that is perpetually in crisis, with no hope of advancing without the charitable aid, or at best, without assistance provided and managed by good willed non- African actors.

Even the BBC who has a long history of covering Africa occasionally stumbles.                      On 27^th April 2010 BBC initiated a live debate on air during their programme “Africa have your Say”. This was in response to criticism that a series of documentary films about Nigeria called “Welcome to Lagos” had focused on slum dwellers living on rubbish dumps on land and water. This was the question they asked.

Are TV portrayals of your country accurate? What part of your country would you like to see reflected more in the Western media?

Fred Nwonwu, a Nigerian journalist’s contributions to the debate was typical of a lot of the contributions.

…….I am a Nigerian journalist and can readily tell you that the BBC, like most western media, has an overly negative view of Africa and seeks to portray Africa thus. I am yet to see a balanced report about Africa from the BBC, and I read African and world news on the BBC daily.
While I won't claim that BBC goes out of its way to report falsehood, since the events do actually happen, it is the style of reportage that gnaws at our sensibilities

I completely agree with Fred. As an African I hold the perspective that, Africa is negatively covered in the western media either by commission or omission

MITIGATING FACTORS

Political undertones In Africa a good number of us in the media believe that the past and current representations of the African continent, especially in the mass media, are manifestations of political agendas by players in the Western media, such as governments, power groups, and multinational corporations whose interests are often one and the same. For example the “discourse” on hunger in Africa in the 1980’s and 90’s and its causes, was interpreted as one of the signs of the Cold War between East and West. So the people of Ethiopia had been hit with this famine because their government had chosen the socialist path.

Another example is the sudden interest and increase in the coverage of Zimbabwe from the year 2000 after the government started aggressive land reforms that saw white farmers expelled from their farms. Prior to this Mugabe’s oppression of political opponents and the media were only carried as footnotes in international media coverage.

Enter China. The Chinese are in Africa and there are no indications they plan to leave soon. Resource-poor China needs raw materials, African governments want Chinese money. All the while as the Chinese battle the West for influence in Africa we see the beginnings of a media machine being rolled out. Currently the Xinhua news agency has over 23 bureaus in Africa.

In an article titled “Pursuing Soft Power, China Puts Stamp on Africa’s News” by Andrew Jacobs published in August 2012 in the New York times he notes; Beijing’s bid to provide a counterpoint to Western influence, however, is raising alarms among human rights activists, news media advocates and American officials, who cite a record of censorship that has earned China a reputation as one of the world’s most restrictive countries for journalism.

He goes on to quote the then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s warning to a Congressional committee about the growing influence of state-backed outlets like Russia Today and CCTV.

“We are engaged in an information war, and we are losing that war,”

Why wouldn’t we believe that over the years the West’s coverage of Africa has been tinged with agendas and political undertones? Africa has become a battleground for conflicting agendas of the world super powers and this will surely shape the way Africa will be covered in the western media.

The Ratings Game

However it will be disingenuous for anyone who has worked in a newsroom or media organization to think that Africa’s coverage in the Western media is only based on some kind of grand political agenda to keep us where we are. There are other factors that cannot be overlooked.

 No matter where a newsroom is situated in the world the principles are the same. There is a constant question that needs to be answered by Editors, “What is News?”The default position is to always fall back on another basic principle; Dog bites man, is not news, Man bites dog!! Now that is news, the sensational and the strange makes news and from my perspective Africa is continuously covered from this angle.

This feeds into the ratings game, without ratings/ circulation a media organization is dead, especially when its model is based on advertising revenue. So I have seen news packaged in the most sensational ways possible to continue to attract an audience that is believed to want to see disasters and calamities.

Local Spice

Then there is the problem of the covering of Africa with Western journalists who have not spent enough time in Africa to understand the socio-cultural, geo-political and historic context of the stories that they are covering. At best, they might read a few reports from the internet but this raises the question of credibility. The journalist hops into the “trouble” spot, spends most of the time in hotels and files a report that just provides superficial context to the ongoing “:troubles”. Most of the stories are laced with sweeping generalizations, innuendos of self-inflicted problems and one-dimensional panacea to the troubles.

In recent times there seems to be a shift from the over-reliance on foreign journalists and correspondents covering Africa for the Western media. More and more African journalists have been co-opted by Western media houses to provide reportage on issues in their countries and regions. Ostensibly this is to provide the local flavor and perspectives but I know it is yet still an attempt at improving ratings in the respective countries. So now we see stories that emanate from our countries being told by people who sound like us and with some more contexts to the story. Yet the paternalistic tones of the reportage still persists, there has not been a significant paradigm shift, perhaps because the contextual framework within which the story is initiated,  and the editor who shapes the angle of the story with the journalist,  continue to be predominantly Western.

The use of local journalists also has its inherent problem with the way African countries are covered. There is a historical antagonism between the private media and Governments across the continent. In most African countries the private media had to fight battles with their governments for press liberalization. Those battles were bitter and in some cases journalists had to pay the ultimate price. Eventually the governments’ iron grip on the media was broken and generally a great schism was created. The state media continued to do their masters bidding whiles the private media played the watchdog role by doing everything within their control to make the governments unpopular.

So what do you think will happen if a journalist from the private press is given the opportunity to report on his country urged on by an editor who is looking for the “strange and undesirable?” Your guess is as good as mine.

And make no mistake about it, a journalist who does stories that are considered too “good” must certainly be the puppet of the government.

HOW AFRICA COVERS THE WEST?

This is almost an absurd question.

 Like the West carries limited coverage of Africa there is very little coverage of the West in news bulletins in Africa. For a one one-hour bulletin most stations will dedicate between 3-10 minutes to stories coming out of the West. The motive here for most of them is to just have a segment in their bulletins

With the exception of a handful of media houses on the continent that have correspondents in the West most media houses in Africa do not have the resources to even cover their own countries and regions well. Perhaps the state broadcasters do. On the occasions that the media from Africa get to travel to the west on government sponsored trips or to cover sporting events, their coverage of the west perpetuates that shiny one dimensional image of the west.

Our sources of foreign news- in our newsrooms come from the International news wires Reuters, AFP and Xinhua.

Other media houses have partnerships with DW, BBC, Aljazeera, CNN and in recent times CCTV from China. News, documentary and magazine content is borrowed from these partners and transmitted as it is with almost no commentary or analysis of the stories being carried. We carry the west as the west wants us to see them.

Of course in some African countries there is censorship on news coming from the West and certain stories are completely blocked from audiences, whiles in other countries news from western media can only be carried delayed on free to air television. This censorship is usually more about controlling the access to news than about shaping audiences thoughts about the West.

In Ghana the images that come from the West tend to be very positive and perpetuate the cultural images of a highly developed and civilized nation that does not have any problems. We are there for the royal weddings and all the grand events. Usually with a sound bite of an African on the sidelines completely in awe of what is going on, but if we are lucky and the images that come from the Western media tend to show another side of West we carry that story and hopefully we give a rounded coverage of the West. Africans then see that there are also hungry and homeless people in the West.

From the above one can conclude that Africa does not cover the West and this to a large extent is due to budgetary constraints, we do not have the money or the resources in most organizations to put correspondents and journalist in Western countries to enable us cover the news from our perspective. This lack of resources also impacts on the way we cover our individual countries and Africa as a whole. If we cannot cover Africa well why should the West do so? Therein lies our greatest challenge in impacting on the way Africa is covered in the West.

So it is obvious that the current dialogue that we in Africa are having with the West will continue to be heavily tilted in their favour. They control our image, they control their image.

 CHANGING TIDES

 Let me say that current trends signify the beginnings of a change in the tide.

Perhaps because Africa is the “last frontier” more and more international news networks are designing programmes for Africans and these programmes tend to be more balanced in coverage and more diverse in subject matter.

So now you can see programmes like Focus on Africa and Africa Have your Say on BBC, African Voices on CNN, DWTV African Stories and DW radio’s Africa Link.

In these programmes you see faces and hear voices that tell the stories within a clear socio-cultural context bringing meaning to the stories giving you a deeper understanding and focusing on stories that showcases an Africa that is familiar to African viewers. A continent like any other that has enormous challenges and enormous successes. We are not just seeing hungry children, warlords, brutal dictators and hopeless economies. We now hear the voices of entrepreneurs, honest leaders, young adults who are reaching for the stars and great minds who are contributing on the world stage

Charity begins at Home.

As we say in Ghana , charity begins at home. What we mean when we say that is, if you want to see a change you better start with yourself. If we want to change the way Africa is covered in the west then we have to change the way we cover Africa in Africa. Journalists across the continent must begin a discourse and put into action the ideas that will emanate from this discourse.

So I will set this discussion in motion by offering my two, no sorry three Ghanaian pesewas on how we must shape the way Africa is covered in the western media

1.  Journalists in Africa must go back to the basis of their profession – Objective reporting. A lot of African journalists need a radical change of mind because many independent media have a tendency to be anti-authority and anti-government. Don’t get me wrong I am not an apologist for government but there needs to be a mind-shift within the African journalist. Our job is to tell the story and tell the story how it is. If the stories show the government in a bad or good light we must tell it. There are so many positive stories going on in Africa in business, entertainment, sports, development that if we remain objective and do not provide a one sided coverage of our countries I am confident that the coverage of the continent will be wholly positive. Remember that a lot of western media houses who do not have an active presence in Africa scour the local media to pick up stories on what is trending and of relevance to the continent. If our local reportage is balanced and well rounded then we can set of a domino effect and hopefully receive balanced reportage from these western media organizations.

 

1. More collaboration within regional news houses should be fostered; there should be exchange in news between countries. There are hardly any collaborations amongst African media houses it is as if after all these years of independence we still find it difficult to mentally cross the imaginary lines that separate us . I personally have spent over a year trying to collaborate with one of the strong news television stations in Nigeria. It is slowly grinding on and I believe someday this collaboration will finally materialize. As media organizations seek individual partnerships across the continent my proposition is that a regional or continental clearing house for news be set up by private media organizations to share stories. Already various African media houses are producing hours and hours of content about their countries and these stories just end up sitting in archives. On the other hand if I want a story about what is going on in a neighbouring country I end up relying on images and stories coming out of the international news wires.          Imagine how the coverage of Africa on the continent will be greatly improved if media houses around the continent can access stories from Africa told by Africans.  The operational word here is SHARE because it is a fact that due to shoe-string budgets most stations and media organizations will not access such content if they have to pay for it.

 

1. I believe another way that African journalists can impact on the coverage of Africa is the use of new media. The internet has made the world a smaller place– it is less expensive, stories can be online and people can access this from all over the world. You can use social media to tell the positive stories so that the European media can access these stories, they can follow up and use them. Again journalists can broadcast via new media and use social media tools to reach a younger target that have not yet been corrupted by cultural stereotypes.

So to wrap up my proposition let me restate my idea. If a new African-journalist is born a journalist who covers his country with the sensitivity and understanding that is required, and that journalist produces stories that are rounded and multi-faceted, the first step of the journey to redefining our image has begun.

 If western media use these local journalists or journalist with a deep knowledge of the socio-cultural dynamics of the regions they cover, then for sure this journey we have began will surely end well.

As I sign off, I leave you with a simple question which may not need an answer.

QUESTION: Is it true that until the lion learns to tell the hunting story, the hunter will always be the hero in the stories?

It is not about what the western media writes about us, it is about what we write about ourselves.

Thank You.

The writer is the Programmes Director of MultiTV.