New media models for Africa

This essay is part of an occasional feature on this blog that presents compelling stories from elsewhere in the world, particularly Africa, that are little reported in the American media. It's part of my campaign to get people to realize there is a lot going on in the world outside the US, IsraelStine, Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

AllAfrica.com has a good article on new blueprints and models for the continent's media as discussed at the recent African Media Leaders’ Forum in Dakar, Senegal.

The chief executive officer of East Africa’s Nation Media Group urged African journalists take ownership of how the continent's stories are told. He said the African press should be less reliant on western media outlets and "to tell the African story in an African way."

He also called for African media leaders to pool resources for training and for more focus on bringing more radio broadcasters – who reached much bigger audiences than newspaper – to join other media leaders in planning for the future.

A Burkinabè publisher called for the establishment of training courses in skills such as media management for publishers in Africa. He also advocated collaboration among publishers so they could learn from one another about such practical issues as methods of distribution, and even share co-operatively-owned printing presses.

I found this article really interesting. It's always frustrated me the way the western media covers Africa, focusing almost exclusively on famines, wars and other crises. Most of the time, western journalists jet in whenever there's a 'hot' situation, talk to various cabinet ministers and rebel leaders and then jet out as soon as things calm down. They rarely scratch beneath the surface to find something outside the convenient narratives of plundering and ethnic hatred.

These crises need to be covered. People really are dying in Darfur and North Kivu. But there's more going on in Africa than just misery. You just wouldn't know this from the media coverage, even the ones like the BBC that actually cover it reasonably well.

This lack of proportion distorts westerners' perceptions of Africa.

Most news reporting in general is of bad things. Today, my local newspaper contained, among other things, stories of a fire that made people homeless, a town supervisor convicted of a felony, massive state budget cuts and an attempted armed robbery. The paper mostly reports bad news because that's standard operating procedure for most mainstream media outlets.

And if my only knowledge of this area was from the paper, I'd avoid it like the plague.

But the thing is this. MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE tells me that this is a great place to live. My personal experience is that the people here are generally friendly; I have no doubt the community will rally to help the people who lost their home in the fire. My personal experience is that this area is pretty safe.

The media may report the bad news, but I have my personal experience to balance out my perception of this area.

Most people do NOT have that balancing personal experience when it comes to Africa. So they read all the horrible things, but are kept in the dark about all the good things. They are not aware of how communal village life is and how everyone is expected to share with those less fortunate. They are not aware that outside war zones, crimes like theft in small villages are virtually non-existent. They are not aware of how villagers will pool their resources to send a single boy or girl to university in Europe or the US.

And they are not aware that the overwhelming majority of countries in Africa are at war right now.