Most international news media is highly biased in their reportage of Africa. Their news is highly pessimistic, generalised and has no justification whatsoever. They choose to focus on a few main stories such as Mbeki’s AIDS policies or the Zimbabwean land issue, and make out as though Africa is a war-torn, hopeless case in the hands of dictators. Although it may not be far from the truth I think these foreign and especially British journalists should be shot for portraying such stereotypical views of Africa. A lot of them are playing out to ignorant audiences who will continue to think that Africa is one big country and one big farmland, if they continue to report like this. Africa has some 54 independent countries and hundreds of ethnicities. Do they not realise the intricacies of the situations? I wish news media was not so simplistic. It’s sad to see that international news media, which is depended upon throughout the world, continues to feed stereotypical stories of war, starvation and depravation to the public.
True but the BBC and the Guardian are still better then CNN and hollywood. It is a shame but until we have an "al-jazera" media for Africa we will continue with the negative feedback.
*A lot of them are playing out to ignorant audiences who will continue to think that Africa is one big country and one big farmland, if they continue to report like this. Africa has some 54 independent countries and hundreds of ethnicities. Do they not realise the intricacies of the situations? *
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The belief that Africa is one massive country somewhere 'out there' is rather prevalent; i was amazed when i heard someone on Canadian tv state this matter of factly (until he was corrected). There are lots of problems with western-based media, but how better are non-Western news media outlets? Someone correct me if i am wrong, but there is next to no coverage of Africa in many Muslim (including Pakistani) publications; when was the last time Khaleej Times, Dawn, or Gulf News ran a comprehensive special feature on a positive news story regarding an African country? Egypt's Al Ahram publishes a regular column from Gamal Nkrumah, which overall is not badly written - that's the only one i can think of off the top of my head.
There's also the issue of 'relevance' - Africa is just not considered 'relevant' to the audiences being catered to. Look at the main BBC website at the links on the left; they have "South Asia" (which is technically speaking a region, not a continent) as an entirely separate category - separate from the rest of Asian countries. Fair enough - that would be tolerable had BBC not lumped all of Africa into one category - that's more than fifty countries lumped all together into one tiny section. Surely if India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are special enough to justify their own category, they should have created separate categories for the entire African continent as well. Dunno if this is correct but they might justify their decision based upon the demographics and "interest" of their audience.
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*Originally posted by Nadia_H: *
Dunno if this is correct but they might justify their decision based upon the demographics and "interest" of their audience.
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I think that hits the nail on the head. For better or worse, westerners do not have an interest in African affairs. I don't know even if recent immigrants from Africa have that much interest in their homland, especially compared to South Asians.
hmcq, I'm not even sure if Al-Jazeera is a valid source? I've heard they're also quite biased.
Surprisingly though, so many local news anchors from SA are now on CNN, like 5-6 of them and they have a new show called African expressions or something to that effect.
Nadia you're absolutely right about public interest. It is so difficult to guage interest in Africa. But what do we do about the bad media press? Do you think that apart from just blaming the foreign media, that local media itself is quite responsible. Because the local media can be very vociferous and biased, anti the local government. So do you think bad or negative press coverage within Africa is reflected abroad?
Don’t these black people have any media of their own? What about Central Asia? How much coverage does that region get? When the problems of African continent are highlighted, Africans cry foul. What do you want the CNN to report? Zulu King's wives with their titis hanging out? Africa needs to take care of it's problems: land reforms, AIDS, famine, dictators, corruption, etc. When one of them tries building nukes, the western media will get involved. Until then, stop complaining and start taking some actions.
Cat Woman:
Generally speaking, in the American media bad news is considered news and good news is considered nothing. If there is blood and death, it is front page. If not, it goes on the inside pages.
So, whether it be Africa, South America or anywhere else, starvation and famine are newsworthy. People dieing of AIDS is newsworthy. Hutus committing genocide upon the Tutsis is newsworthy (and vice versa). Progress with the average farm generating an extra bushel of corn this harvest year is not.
This forum actually gives you the opportunity to educate some of us about something good that is going on somewhere on the African continent. Is there anything positive occuring that we should be aware of?
Al-Jazeera’s goal is to appeal to the Arab world thus they will produce stories Arabs want to here and discard ones they don't. Foxnews agenda is clearly pro right. There are those here who want to show the United States in a positive light while others want to cast it in a negative light. The reasons behind agendas’ vary, but everyone has one including Media organizations. Those who just want to report the whole and unbiased truth are few and far between.
NYA oh come on Uncle. Didn't expect you to come up with such rash 'Bush'-man like statements!
Ofcourse Africa has very active media. Thap can tell you about the Egyptian networks and there's a large digital news network called SABC Africa which runs 24-7 like BBC and CNN, and which is in my opinion a lot more informative and insightful. The African media has played a huge role in democratising Africa. For example, in apartheid South Africa the media was very active as it was under military rule in Nigeria. And it was really influential on the respective governments and international arena. The underground media has now come to the surface.
The whole debate now is how the media can influence and help Africa democratise further and resolve conflict situations. I think the African media can be quite influential in policy-making especially after the whole Rwandan genocide. Just as the media can encourage conflict, I think it's powerful enough to curb it.
Cat woman, if there's plenty of journalistic activity on the Continent, then why are you complaining? Egyptian media is as much African oriented as Pakistani is Scandinavian. It has nothing African about it, it is Pan-Arab Anti-Semite Anti-American camel oriented media, lead by Al-Ahram. There are better publications coming out of Nigeria.
I thought The Frenchies were going to set up a rival to CNN naturally in Africa. Maybe they've got a sniff of news to come.
To be honest on an average day (when the us aint boming some developing nation into development) US media on the whole is pretty cluless about whats going on outside of the states....and thats a good thing.
As my aged collegue pointed out earlier there are a few geographical areas that don't get global news coverage 24/7. Maybe thats a good thing too. Why the need to but your village on any map? Anonimity is a God send. Sure have local news and views spread throughout your respective villages...but it's when news is covered outside of your village that the generalisations begin then no one's happy.
So young man, wouldn't it be more opt to start eating your own crap? Encouraging homegrown independent outward looking media rather than looking outward? Has anyone ever stopped the developing countries to develop independent media? If so, then that's a news to me.
Well, in regards to your last query, i am not so certain i know how extensively foreign media depend upon local African media outlets to file their news pieces. If there is unreliable or biased press coverage within Africa itself, theoretically that should serve as more of an incentive for regional and international media outlets to increase their own standards of journalism - to provide increased options for their audiences.
You mentioned SABC and the *Mail and the Guardian*. How unbiased is the latter? What about IOL?
cnn 