Between May and September 2010 the ten most-read US newspapers and magazines carried 245 articles mentioning poverty in Africa, but only five mentioning gross domestic product growth, yet, according to the McKinsey Quarterly, Africa is “among the world’s most rapidly growing economic regions,” and, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, poverty rates throughout the continent have been falling steadily and much faster than previously thought.
We're willing to bet that if someone did a survey of European newspapers' coverage of Africa the findings wouldn't be much different.
Is there poverty? Of course there is? Is there corruption at high levels? Yes, indeed. Are there wars going on? Yes. Yet, regardless of the story, if you dig deeper into most reports on Africa and you're quite likely to find that the society you're reading about isn't quite as bleak as the story you're reading is trying to make out. And sometimes the report isn't merely an exaggeration, it's just plain wrong: remember the commentary CNN posted to accompany Vice Magazine's video about 'Ghana's e-mail scan gangs'? Or how, for years, Kibera kept being referred to as Africa's biggest slum with a million inhabitants until a population census in 2009 revealed a figure of 194,269? Most people don't have the time to dig deeper, so an entire continent becomes a place of nothing but misery. And if that is the case then there must be something wrong with Africans, mustn't there?
Now, why would Western journalists persist reinforcing the beliefs of their readers, instead of challenging these readers with the reality of whichever part of Africa they are reporting from?
In the Columbia Journalism Review, Karen Rothmyer puts forward the following explanation in her article Hiding the Real Africa - Why NGOs prefer bad news:
... the main reason for the continued dominance of such negative stereotypes, I have come to believe, may well be the influence of Western-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international aid groups like United Nations agencies. These organizations understandably tend to focus not on what has been accomplished but on convincing people how much remains to be done. As a practical matter, they also need to attract funding. Together, these pressures create incentives to present as gloomy a picture of Africa as possible in order to keep attention and money flowing, and to enlist journalists in disseminating that picture.
She goes on to explain that journalists rely on aid organisations for the information on which to base their stories, and since it's in the interest of aid organisations for stories about the continent to consist of nothing but bad news, guess where your average aid worker in Africa is going to take a journalist in search of a quick and simple story?
Graham, based in Ghana, has this to say in a recent post on his blog Critical Point:
Societies work hard to justify their own existence. The rich countries attempt to convince their citizens, and citizens from other parts of the world, of the superiority of their system. They are steadily winning the battle to convince us that theirs is the only way to live. The need for new homogenised markets is the driving force behind this fiction.
The media corporations often belittle other ways of living, ignoring their own self-destruct mechanisms and failing to point out the benefits of alternative systems. In this context, the denigration of Africa is essential for getting Africa to come into the world-wide market, to persuade Africans to desire every bit of consumerist nonsense produced and to convince the rich country’s own increasingly atomised, individualised citizens, that their work-driven, stressful, isolated lives were the destiny the whole of humanity had been striving towards since we first waddled out of the sea.
In a piece entitled Good News Stories About Africa Are Bad For Business, the Ghana-based writer/blogger Fiona Leonard has some suggestions for Western journalists reporting on Africa, at least if they have the faintest desire to get to the heart of stories and paint a truer and clearer picture of reality for their readers/viewers. They are:
Geography
Africa is a continent, not a country, so stop writing about it as if it were. Be specific, and use reference points that people can understand to show just how far apart and how different one country is from another.
Why Are 'We' There?
Instead of writing with the suggestion that the West is "giving" Africa anything for humanitarian reasons, call a spade and spade and admit that foreign governments are investing; aid is tied to trade, aid is tied to long term economic imperatives, some of which are embarrassingly commercial - like wanting access for mining companies. Others have direct social implications. For example, investing in another country's health system has global implications.
Why do people behave the way they do?
There is always a reason why people behave they way they do; it may be cultural, historical, emotional or personal, but there is always a reason. Don't just take what you see at face value, and don't simply accept the first superficial explanation you hear. If you want to understand the nuances of any situation keep digging.
[A Western journalist who does not have the time, patience or inclination to get to the root of whatever he or she is reporting on and look for information that contradicts his or her first impressions will end up with a narrow, context-free story similar to the one they'd have produced had they written it in their bedroom in New York or London. In other words, they'll confirm their own prejudices and those of their readers.]
These are summaries of Fiona's suggestions, so I would urge you to read her complete article, not only to get the full gist of what she has to say but also because she refers to a blog post in the New York Times by a journalist who is clearly troubled by the way Western journalists write about Africa - his post is titled How Should We Cover Africa - and explains why even 'concerned' journalists get it wrong.
WHY POOR REPORTING IS BAD FOR AFRICA
Africans, wherever they live, are not immune to the cumulative effect of these misrepresentations, distortions, incomplete stories and skewed reporting, not even those who live on the continent and have the benefit of a fuller, more complex picture, so eventually many simply start to believe that Africa must be inferior in every way, and if this is true then Africans must be inferior, too. It makes some Africans ashamed to be African, it erodes their confidence (which makes it more difficult for them to deal with non-Africans on an equal footing), makes them take less pride in their culture, and it makes them feel they ought to emulate the American/European econimic system and way of life in every respect, even when this emulation proves to be disastrous. Foreign = good, African = bad. Full stop. If you're a kid growing up with this belief in the air you are basically screwed. Actually, if you're an adult and you believe this, you're screwed, too, because self-loathing is a downward spiral, at least until something jolts your consciousness and knocks some sense into you.
It gives non-Africans a picture of Africa that affects their perceptions of and relationships with Africans, whether they are aware of this or not. I don't think I need to elaborate on why this is a bad thing.
It hurts Africa economically, affects investment in the continent and also the way non-Africans do business in Africa. At a very basic level it does nothing for the tourism industry of any country: On the one hand it puts anywhere in Africa low down on most people's holiday list, so who knows how many potential millions are lost to each country's economy as a result? Or when tourists do visit an African country some automatically assume that any local way of doing things that isn't quite the same as the way things are done back home must be wrong. As someone commenting on Graham's blog wrote, this leads to some very odd remarks like the American lady she overheard complaining that Ghana has too many languages. On the other, it discourages the tourism industry from developing anything beyond the parameters of foreign tourists' expectations of Africa: they want safaris and carved elephants? Ok, safaris and carved elephants all the way. On another level it encourages Westerners doing business in Africa to treat Africans as lesser, baser human beings, and to do things they'd hesitate to do elsewhere - such as being willing to pay bribes or dumping toxic waste without worrying about the consequences.
According to Karen Rothmyer it also has 'the potential to influence policy. “The welfare model [of Africa] is still dominant on the Hill and in Hillary Clinton’s world,” according to van de Walle. Among corporate officials, says Catherine Duggan, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, the perception is still that “Africa is where you put your money once you’ve made it somewhere else.”
Karen's article end on this realistic note: ... in the end, it will probably take sustained economic progress to break the current mould. Sunny Bindra, the Kenyan management consultant, recalls that in the 1980s, “Japan got attention because it was whacking the US. It’s the same with India and China now.” Until that happens, a sick African woman in labor will continue to be treated as poverty porn, and most Africans will have to starve in order to make it onto the evening news.
And that's spot on. Remember how 'Made in China' used to be a sign that a product was crap? Or how the Japanese were seen merely as 'funny' people with 'bizarre' game shows, good for a laugh on the Clive James Show? Look who's laughing now, and it certainly wasn't PR that shifted the balance.
Article Credit: This is Africa
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