Yearender: Is 2006 another landmark for media development in Africa?

Yearender: Is 2006 another landmark for media development inAfrica?

by Yi Gaochao

DAR ES SALAAM, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) - When mass communicationpractitioners in Tanzania rejected this month a draft Freedom ofInformation Bill meant for parliamentary endorsement, theirconsideration was whether the bill could ensure what its title hadpromised.

"The bill is taking even the little we have achieved," lamentedTanzania Media Owners Association Chairman Reginald Mengi whochampions the concept that good governance, transparency and fightagainst graft would only be achieved if there was freedom ofinformation.

The draft bill proposed to replace the non-statutory Media Councilof Tanzania with a state regulatory board to be in charge ofaccreditation, arbitration of disputes and enforcement of code ofethics.

The rejection and then a call by the Tanzanian media practitionersto review the draft were concrete steps in media development in thispart of Africa.

Elsewhere on the continent, journalists, editors and media ownersalso achieved their own progresses, big or small, in the past year.And they made headways in more realms than just freedom ofinformation.

While Western pundits put press freedom under microscope todifferentiate African countries, the Africans themselves focused onhow to merge their differences into shared opportunities that areexpected to help put coverage of Africa and interpretation of suchtaken-for-granted African synonyms as debt and disease, corruptionand conflict as well as poverty and famine in their properperspectives.

"Until we learn to interpret these issues, the Western media wouldcontinue to give the wrong image of Africa," said Godwin Agbroko,editorial board chairman of the This Day newspaper.

The Nigerian newsman added that the Western media are notinterested in the historical aspects that have shaped the realitiesin Africa and that they are only keen to view the continent withtheir own vision.

To help redress the grievances, the African continent has resortedto three waves of Pan-African trail-blazing moves: first the Union ofNational Radio and Television Organizations of Africa (URTNA)starting in 1962; then the Pan-African News Agency (PANA) beginningin 1979, and now the envisaged A24 TV Channel to incept broadcastingsoon.

The first two were orchestrated by a plethora of states affiliatedwith the then Organization of African Unity (now the African Union)and the third was pronounced by an individual mastermind, allcherishing the same hope of fending off Western media domination ifnot distortion of Africa.

The 50-million-U.S.-dollar plan by Salim Amin to launch a 24- hourPan-African TV news channel is said to be nearing completion.

But why should there be one more outlet in the already seeminglycrowded media operation in Africa?

From Cape Town to Cairo and from Dakar to Dar es Salaam, each andevery African country boasts of scores of mass communicationinstitutions in the form of either television, radio, print, photo orInternet, be it state, public, private or community media.

The media pluralism is there, for sure, to accompany if not tosecure the process of democratization.

"It will be very much along the lines of what Al-Jazeera is doingfor the Arab World by telling their story the way they know it," saidAmin who expects the channel to present Africa as a place of bothgood and bad, of both honesty and corruption, of both economicvibrancy and poverty, and of both eager entrepreneurs and those whojust rely on foreign aid.

While Amin is locating the kick-off fund, local and overseaspundits have had to ask themselves how the son of photojournalistMohammed Amin is going to maintain impartiality as he has promised ashe may not be able to repay the debt in a short period of time.

There are already too many media outlets, not only in Africa,which could not hold their own financially long enough to make afame, not to mention a fortune.

Zimbabwean publisher Trevor Ncube knows the problem just too well.The chief executive of The Mail and Guardian said that lack of moneyhad hampered the growth of the media industry in Africa.

Kenya's Nation Media Group CEO Wilfred Kiboro echoed that a weakmedia could not resist control by the executive or other economicforces. "Some media are weak for lack of finances and under suchcircumstances, whoever pays the piper calls the tune," he said.

So credibility is another norm to go by in the campaign ofrighting the wrong.

Though between 2002 and this year, Ghana's ratings on theReporters Without Borders (RSF) annual press freedom index haveclimbed 33 places from 67 to 34 among 168 countries worldwide, manyGhanaians themselves have begun to feel uncomfortable with their free-for-all media, according to George Sarpong, who is the executivesecretary of the Ghana National Media Commission.

"The performance of the local media is by and large dominated byextremely unprofessional and reckless reporting. So professionalismis a big problem here," said the journalism professor.

When journalists from Africa and Europe met in early August thisyear to discuss the vision, need and responsibility of mediapractitioners in Africa, Christian Zabel from the HMR Internationalsuggested that the African professionals should heed both thesuccesses and the mistakes of their European counterparts so as tofare more uneventfully in their media development.

The European media practitioners have just undergone a period ofintense consolidation, convergence, shifting advertising, labor andtechnology, indicated the Cologne-based media consultant.

It is simply unadvisable to veer off the blazed trail. The trailfor Africa has been charted out by the United Nations as theMillennium Development Goals (MDGs) in both society and economy.

Ambassador Mohamed Sahnoun, a special advisor to outgoing UNSecretary-General Kofi Annan, proposed to African media practitionersthat what they do can be an essential tool for both social andeconomic development.

"The media should be an ally to those who strive for goodgovernance, democracy and constant battle against poverty, diseaseand ignorance," said the UN envoy who is also the vice-chairman ofthe council of the UN-affiliated University for Peace.

What he is hinting at is a balance between the traditional servicemedia and the commercialized market media and between the pressfreedom of reporters, editors as individuals and the rights ofinformation of the society as a whole.

Judging whether the media in Africa has made any progress in 2006by just a single RSF index may be lopsided, because there are otheryardsticks in ready stock.

The problem is which one to use as well to gauge the development.