ROOTS OF AN ETHOS OF INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM

Independent newspapers tended to emerge profusely in Africa during the late 1980s and the early 1990s in places where they had emerged before—in Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, and Senegal, among others. As Richard Sandbrook has observed, independent newspapers "did not spring from a vacuum. . . . In some countries, they inherited a tradition of protest with its roots in the anti-colonial struggle."30 In Benin, a tradition of an outspoken, aggressive press dates to the early years of French colonial rule during the first decade of the twentieth century.31 Such traditions stretch back even further in Ghana.32

However, a diverse and even thriving independent press also emerged during the early 1990s in countries with little or no experience of expressing dissent through newspapers. Mali is a particularly striking example: News media there are among the least controlled in sub-Saharan Africa.33 The mix of independent media includes many privately owned radio stations, another uncommon feature of contemporary African media systems.34 So traditions of expressing dissent and conflicting opinions through newspapers—while certainly important to the emergence of contemporary independent newspapers—are not altogether or sufficiently explanatory.

 

Demonstration Effects

 

The demonstration effect of training programs, features of Africa's media landscape for decades, also may account for the emergence of an ethos of independent journalism in formerly authoritarian African states. While the lasting value of training programs has not been analyzed systematically or in great detail,35 some studies have indicated that training, directly or indirectly, has helped promote values and attitudes consistent with an ethos of independent journalism. W.A.E. Skurnik, for example. has described how journalism faculty and students in the late 1970s at the Ecole Supérieure Internationale de Journalisme in Cameroon expressed skepticism about the then-intense international debate about establishing a New World Information and Communication Order.

 

The prospective new world information order—a concept much discussed within the United Nations that envisioned measures to adjust a perceived imbalance in the flow of international news to and from developing countries—was seen by Camerooman faculty and students as camouflage for state control of the flow of information.36

 

Babatunde Jose has also suggested the salience of demonstration effects offered by leading Western newspapers: "Many African journalists look at some newspapers across the Atlantic and flex their muscles and want to act like the American newspapers. . . . But many African journalists try to do this and when they find themselves in the warm embrace of the criminal code, they blame governments for depriving them of freedom to publish all the news."37

 

Comparison with models overseas is no doubt a crucial factor in developing an ethos of independent journalism,38 much as it is a probable factor in nurturing democratic values in authoritarian political systems. As Bermeo has written, "Political elites have much to learn from the successes and failures of their counterparts abroad. . . . Dictatorial and oppositional elites often look abroad for insights about 'what works and what does not."39 Journalists like-wise have found influential models abroad.

 

In Côte d'Ivoire, for example, journalists for non-governmental publications speak of French newspapers as representing models for them.40 The Ivorian daily Le Jour evokes the Parisian daily Liberation in its typography and in tone. Moreover, survey data suggested that the French press—which has circulated in Côte d'Ivoire with few restrictions for many years—was widely read and was quite influential among Ivorian university students as long ago as the l970s.41

 

A Link in the Chain

 

The independent press in Africa often is regarded by scholars as an end in itself—as a press that is elitist, urban-bound, and constrained to serving upscale audiences literate in European languages. Kwame Karikari, a Ghanaian media analyst, has stated as much: "The independent press in Africa, even as it struggles to reemerge from the shadows of authoritarianism, is, by and large, an elite institution. It can be argued that, therefore, both the state-owned and privately owned independent papers represent different and sometimes contending sections of the political and economic elite."42

The elitist characterization, while not uncommon, is more than a little misleading, however. It is certainly more revealing and useful to consider the press in Africa as a link in what John A. Wiseman has described as "a chain of conununication, in which reading is only part of the chain."43 In Africa, the chain of communication is predominantly oral. But written reports can be and are readily absorbed into that chain. The sight of the literate reading newspapers to those who cannot is not uncommon in Africa.44

 

Kenneth Best, one of West Africa's most persecuted and, hence, most prominent journalists, has recounted how illiterate market women in the Gambia used to buy copies of his newspaper, place them under their wares and at night take them home where their children would read to them.45 In Mali, radio programs that review articles published in the independent press are said to stir "more anguish in politi-cal circles than the original written versions."46 It is, to be sure, important not to overstate the influence of any individual link in Africa's chain of communication.

 

Radio, for example, has been characterized as "the most effective means of disseminating information and ideas in Africa"47 and even as "the central nervous system of [a] very nervous, decen-tralized continent."48 Indeed, radio broadcasts can reach populations (mainly in rural Africa) that are often inaccessible to urban-based print media. Private radio has proved immensely popular in some places, such as Mali, where in the mid-l990s forty stations competed for audiences.49

The power of radio in Africa, some analysts maintain, was perversely demonstrated in Rwanda's genocide in 1994, in which perhaps 500,000 ethnic Tutsis and their Hutu sympathizers were slain. The Paris-based journalists'organization Reporters sans Frontières concluded that Radio Libre des Mille Collines, the private radio station of Hutu extremists, "stirred up ethnic hatred and masterminded massacres" and thus was "partly responsible for the mass killings."50

But assessments of radio's potential power in Africa should be tempered or qualified by several factors. The medium in Africa, as elsewhere, is largely devoted to music and entertainment, rather than to news reporting and political conunentary.51 The popular French-language FM station, Africa No. 1, transmits from Gabon a steady programming diet of African music, game shows, and brief news dispatches, for example.52

Research about African radio audiences and how they process broadcast reports is spotty, but at least one study, conducted in Kenya, reported that "only the most highly-educated [listeners] can remember any substantial portion of the news" broadcast on radio. The finding prompted the researchers to suggest:

"Some of the difficulty in recalling the news may be due to the form in which the material was presented. It may be that since the news is written by educated and trained individuals, they prepare newscasts to satisfy their peer group and themselves," employing complex sentence structures and polysyllabic words often baffling to less-educated listeners.53 Other research has suggested that radio reports often are regarded with suspicion,54 a legacy and consequence of the many years of state control of the airwaves.

Moreover, privately owned, local radio stations independent of direct govermnent control have encountered in sub-Saharan Africa impediments not unlike those of print media: limited financial resources, limited advertising, and a limited pool of trained personnel.55 "When they are able to survive," one observer has written, "the stations [often] considerably reduce their staffs and their productions and transform their programming grids into an uninterrupted sequence of musical pieces."56

 

Competition is intense from international outlets, such as Radio France Internationale, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and the Voice of America, which for years have beamed short-wave programs to Africa. Increasingly, international broadcasters are gaining access to African audiences via FM frequencies. In 1994, for example, the British Broadcasting Corporation launched BBC Afrique FM in Abidjan, to compete with the FM franchises of Radio France Internationale and Africa No. 1.57

 

 

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NOTES


32. See, among others, Sandbrook, "Transitions without Consolidation," 82-83.
33. See Leonard R. Sussman and Kristen Guida, "Death Toll Down, Press Freedom Up," Editor & Publisher (24 January 1998): 16. Freedom House, a New York City-based organization, annually compiles comparative rankings of press freedom, based on its analyses of political and economic controls on the media, legal restrictions, and attacks on and harassment of journalists. The ratings are "free," "partly free," and "not free."
34. See Stephen Buckley, "Mali: Tuned in and Democratic," Washington Post (24 March 1996): A27.
35. For a brief but critical account of Western training programs in Africa and the Third World, see Anthony Smith, The Geopolitics of Information: How Western Culture Dominates the World (London: Faber and Faber, 1980), 155-156. For a detailed, country-specific study, see Folu Folarin Ogundimu, "Donor-Driven Initiatives and Media Training in Africa," Journalism and Mass Communication Educator 52, 3 (Autumn 1997): 48-62.
36. W.A.E. Skurnik, "Press Freedom in Africa: From Pessimism to Optimism," in Dov Ronen, ed., Democracy and Pluralism in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1986): 156.
37. Jose, "Press Freedom in Africa," 259.
38. Randall has suggested this relationship as well, writing: "In Africa a more independent professional ethos may have been further fostered by traveling, working or training abroad, or working as African correspondents for foreign newspapers and journals." See "The Media and Democratisation in the Third World," 634.
39. Bermeo, "Democracy and the Lessons of Dictatorship," 283.
40. Author interviews with Ivorian journalists in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, July 1996.
41. See Skurnik, "Press Freedom in Africa," 158-160.
42. Karikari, "The Press and Democracy," 56-57.
43. John A. Wiseman, The New Struggle for Democracy in Africa (Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1996), 56,
44. See, among others, Wiseman, The New Struggle for Democracy in Africa, 56. He wrote, "Most people [in Africa] cannot read newspapers but, equally, most people know somebody who can." See also Konaré, "Independent Papers Enjoy a Whiff of Freedom," 21. Konaré described "illiterate people buying newspapers and paying liter-ate people to read them out loud." See also Ibrahim Cheikh Diop, director of the Ni-gerien newspaper, HasM, quoted in Presse francophone d 'Afrique: Vers le pluralisme (Paris: Hannattan, 1991), 88.
45. Kenneth Best, interview with author, November 1996.
46. "Media: Private Radio Troubles in Ghana," Africa Research Bulletin (1-28 February 1995): 11769.
47. Richard Carver and Adewale Maja-Pearce, "Making Waves," Index on Censorship 1(1995): 206.
48. John Baizar, "The Power of Africa's Airwaves," Los Angeles Times (22 Octo-ber 1995): Al.
49. Buckley, "Mali: Tuned in and Democratic."
50. "Introduction," Reporters sans Frontières 1995 Report: Freedom of the Press throughout the World (London: Libbey, 1995), 3. See also, Balzar, "The Power of Af-rica's Airwaves." Balzar wrote that the Rwandan massacres exemplified "the most malevent misuse of radio."
51. See Jerry Komia Domatob and Stephen William Hall, "Development Journal-ism in Black Africa," Gazette 31, 1 (1983): 20, and Mytton, Mass Communication in Africa, 135. See also, "Media: The Mirage of Freedom?" Africa Research Bulletin (1- 31 July 1995): 11932.
52. Théophile Vittin, "L'écoute des radios étrangères en Afrique noire," Mondes en Developpement 19,73(1991): 46.
53. John Stauffer, Richard Frost, and William Rybolt, "Recall and Comprehension of Radio News in Kenya," Journalism Quarterly 57,4 (Winter 1980): 616.
54. Harry G. West and Jø Ellen Fair, "Development Communication and Popular Resistance in Africa: An Examination of the Struggle over Tradition and Modernity through Media," African Studies Review 36, 1 (April 1993): 93.
55. Cherif Ouazani, "Emetteurs en folie," Jeune Afrique (12-18 February 1997):66.
56. Ouazani, "Emetteurs en folie," 66.
57. Thalia Griffiths, "Air Wars in West Africa," Reuters (3 May 1994).

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