Every morning, I start my day with my cup of caffeine in hand and my radio (CBS 880) in the background. (Not that u needed to know that). So this morning, while getting ready for school and running late as usual, I wasn't really paying attention to the news, coz it was the same gripping story on the Virginia shootings, no new information had really been released and they were about to have a press conference to reveal the Identity of the "mentally deranged retarded psychotic loner" who carried out the execution style shooting Spree in one of the engineering buildings on the Blacksburg Virginia Tech Campus. Personally, I think his corpse should be beheaded in public with a guillotine. Uhm, ok maybe that was a little much, I need to take a chill pill, but anyway u get the point. Ok, I just veered off topic a little bit, pardon me
So anyway, the next news bit that came on on the radio was a feature story on the "Osgood file." It focused on whether, news consumers are better informed now, as opposed to say, 50 years ago when most ppl could not really afford a tv set. Technically, it should be that way, because we now have innumerable amount of news outlets, both web-based and otherwise. But unfortuinately, this isn't the case.
Despite the proliferation of media outlets in recent years, the coaxial and digital revolutions and attendant changes in news audience behaviors have had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
On average, today’s citizens are about as able to name their leaders, and are about as aware of major news events, as was the public nearly 20 years ago, the survey found. The new survey includes nine questions that are either identical or roughly comparable to questions asked in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 2007, somewhat fewer were able to name their governor, the vice president and the president of Russia, but more respondents than in the earlier era gave correct answers to questions pertaining to national politics.
In 1989, for example, 74 percent could come up with Dan Quayle’s name when asked who the vice president is. Today, somewhat fewer (69 percent) are able to recall Dick Cheney. However, more Americans now know that the chief justice of the Supreme Court is generally considered a conservative and that Democrats control Congress than knew these things in 1989. Some of the largest knowledge differences between the two time periods may reflect differences in the amount of press coverage of a particular issue or public figure at the time the surveys were taken. But taken as a whole the findings suggest little change in overall levels of public knowledge, according to the survey.
The survey provides further evidence that changing news formats are not having a great deal of impact on how much the public knows about national and international affairs. The polling does find the expected correlation between how much citizens know and how avidly they watch, read or listen to news reports. The most knowledgeable third of the public is four times more likely than the least knowledgeable third to say they enjoy keeping up with the news “a lot,” the report said.
O.I.U
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Who Do "Justice" Oprah or "Biased" Brian Ross think they are?
Ok so the other day, actually on Friday April 13th, My friend Jojo called me up and asked me turn on my tv and watch the "Court of Public Opinion" also known as the Oprah Show. "Justice" Oprah decided to dedicate an entire show on scam artists and how they con "poor sympathetic" Americans out of thousands of dollars. Ok, normally I wouldn't have a problem with this, but then the mugu-licious Mr. Brian Ross appeared...the ABC News Chief Correspondent and 20/20 host who did a piece on Scam Artists in Nigeria a couple of months ago.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I am "Miss Don't Diss My Continent" and even worse, "Don't Dare Diss My Country"or you'll get bitch-slapped..well, I bitch slap ppl by schooling their ignant asses. Anyway, on friday the mugu focused on Nigeria as the kingdom of Scammers. If he just reported the news "As-Is", and informed people to be aware of emails they get from Nigeria, then that's fine. But no that would have been too fair, of course there is no way in hell you expect an elite "Oyibo" American journalist to report events in Africa in a fair and unbiased way; That would simply be asking for too much. They need to use the "brush of doom" to paint it, or else it won't be scintillating enough for their audience.....Ok, I got off track a little.
So anyway, Justice Oprah and her news correspondent began talking. Mr. Ross said he decided to travel around the world and go undercover to catch online con-men. The problem with this is that the man only visited Nigeria. He visited "the slum" of Lagos which he described as a "ghetto" at best. Ok, I thot he was talking about scamming, why delve into the depraved economic conditions? that was my first beef with him. He travelledd "half-way around the world" to Nigeria, home to more than 13 million people". First of, since when is Nigeria half-way accross the world from the United States, and 13 million people? uhm someone needs to school this man...Nigeria is home to over 140 million people. Abi did he go to Ojuelegba and think that was the entire country?....He then proceeded to talk about to how Nigerians are taught at an early age how to scam and there are even courses on scamming in Nigerian schools, right down to Nigerian primary schools. Ok, maybe I am an ajebota and did not attend Onigbongbo community school, but can anyone please tell me what school in Nigeria teaches students how to scam. This is the false information that the media panders to naive and ignorant Americans, who as far as they are now concerned have learned that All Nigerians are scammers.
Mr Ross goes on to say that Americans are the primary targets of these scams because scammers see them as "mugus"—which means "big, gullible fools."(For the record, I definitely see him as a mugu for misleading the American audience).
Meanwhile all this time, the Judge (Oprah) is just sitting down there like a mugu shaking her head and taking it all in while unintentinally misleading her audience. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying Nigerians are not scammers; I am sure everyone with an email address has received an email from a Nigerian claiming to be the brother of the late Igwe who had over 150million dollars sitting in his back account and wants to transfer the money to you. We've all gotten those emails. But we know better than to fall for them. Actually come to think of it, people who fall for these scams really are mugus. The way the news piece was presented made it seem as though all Nigerians - Young and Old- are scammers. They presented it as if all Nigerians have a DNA strand called "Scamonucleic whatever" Mr. mugu (Ross) showed one little kwe kwe kwe house like this and called it a mansion by Nigerian standard, I mean what da hell, If he wants to see state of the art houses, he should come to naija...we build houses with bricks and blocks, unlike America we do not build with plank and plywood. Besides what do the size of houses have to do with scam artists in Nigeria?..again, the news media will squeeze in anything negative so as to console their audience that things in America are not as bad as they seem, look! In Nigeria they have it worse.
At the end of the rather redundant show, Oprah gave a clichéd disclaimer of some sort; She said "Save ur letters, I am not saying all Nigerians are bad, just the scammers"...I was like fucking moron, didn't you just imply that all Nigerians are scammers? so how the hell would your middle aged housewives or to be politically correct "Stay-At-Home Moms" who watch ur show, know the difference between a scammer and regular hard-working Nigerian?...hissssssss
I am just angry Jare, ignore me..hope ya'll have a happy Sunday..
O.I.U
Tribute to my Grandmother: My One True Love!
I MAY NOT BE THE GREATEST POET IN THE WORLD, BUT THESE ARE WORDS FROM THE HEART
In Memory of Mrs. Felicia Aribiene Long-John aka Amama-lolo
----September 1913 - January 19th, 2006
My most beloved Grandmother Your body is gone,
but your spirit lives on in my life
_____________________________________________________________________
Life without you is tough, rough and cruel
Not hearing your voice every weekend is painful
But knowing that you are pain-free makes my world alright
Mama, i am almost 21. Can u believe it? You raised a beautiful little girl.I PROMISE i'll never let you down. Your little girl is going to be somebody someday!!!!
_____________________________________________________________________
Your hands so soft
Your voice so sweet
Your eyes so full of joy and hope
You were my favorite the only one
I loved you more than everyone and anyone
Never a time when you let me down
Always wearing a smile never a frown
Everyday for 20 years you guided me through the right path
You never let me go astray, not even once
Everyday for 9 years you dropped me off at school
You are my light, my north star
On a calm morning in January
With light showers outside on the streets of New York
It was mid-day on a Thursday
We both got a call
With different destinations
I received mine around twelve-thirty
And found out you had left for heaven
You left ahead of me
You knew where you'd be
In a place you never saw
Standing right there next to grandpa and Kalada
While you're up there, I'm down here
The soft music of Yolanda Adams tingles my ears
Telling me "This too shall pass"
I shed one tear
Seeing you there, laying so still
I suddenly get a deep chill
Never seen a prettier smile
Than the smile you always wore
Here it is another day,
I never had the chance to see you one last time
Never had the chance to say my last good-bye
I see you, looking down at me
Looking down at the ground
It's grandpa's grave and now your home bound
I walk away in silence knowing you are safe
turn round to get one last look and think of all it took
I picture you walking through the gates
Finally you see him grandpa waits, he's been waiting for 23 years
Now once again as he did before he gets to have you back
But as much as I know I have some ways to fall
Back into the arms of my beloved grandma
Everynight we talk, we laugh and we cry
Tonight will be no different
I will fall back into your arms as i go to sleep
Knowing that you will always catch me whenever I fall
Friday, April 13, 2007
I Am Now At Peace With Myself......
On Thursday, the 19th of January 2006 I received a heart wrenching phone call telling me my beloved grandmother had passed away. At that moment, my heart skipped a couple of beats and my life literally came crashing down. Until today, I had never full recovered from that loss, and I honestly never thought I would one day recover from that loss and accept the fact the woman who single handedly raised me up was gone.Well, the most surreal thing happened to me while I was sleeping. You see when my grandmother passed away and I found out that I was not going to be able to attend her funeral, I was thrown into a dire state of depression which quite honestly, I never quite recovered from until today.
Since my grandmother passed away I've been listening to this song called "My Heaven" by Mary Chapin Carpenter. The lyrics basically express the thoughts of Woman who has "kicked the bucket" and is now in heaven, and is explaining to her loved ones what heaven is like and how they shouldn't cry for her becuse she is happy and pain free where she is.
Well, last night while I was asleep, For the first time since my grandmother died, I had a dream about my her. I was sitting somewhere crying and all sad about missing her and out of nowhere she came and sat next to me and was talking to me and we had a whole conversation. At the end of the conversation she sang that song to me. I cannot express all of the emotions I felt. it was a combination of love, joy, sorrow, happiness etc. every word of that song had a meaning and that was when I realized that my grandmother was in a better place. You see my grandmother passed away from a combination of old age (she was 92) and had certain medical conditions, chief among them being Nephropathy, a kidney condition. So before she passed away she had had to endure four (4) very painful dialysis of her kidneys, and a host of other medical procedures.
While she was singing, the smile on her face just said it all; She was HAPPY and AT PEACE with herself. At that moment I realized that there was no need to keep mourning . She is in a very very happy place and is content with her new home: Heaven. Finally, 15 months later, I am now at PEACE with MYSELF!
These are the lyrics of the song she sang to me....they might not mean much to you, but they mean the whole world to me!
Nothing shatters nothing breaks
Nothing hurts and nothing aches
I've got myself one helluva place in my heaven
Looking down at the world below
A bunch of whining, fighting people
Up here we got none of those, in my heaven
There's pools and lakes and hills and mountains
Music, art, and lighted fountains
Who needs bucks here, no one's counting, in my heaven
No one works, we all just play
We pick the weather everyday
If you change your mind, that's ok, in my heaven
Kalada's up here, grandpa too
In a condo with to-die-for views
There's presidents and movie stars
You just come as you are
No one's lost and no one's missing
No more partings just hugs and kissing
And all these stars are just for wishing, in my heaven
There's little white lights everywhere
Your childhood do in Dad's old chair
And more memories than my heart can hold
When Eva's singing "Fields of Gold"
There's neighbors, thieves and long lost lovers
villains, poets, kings and mothers
Up here we forgive each other, in my heaven
For every soul that's down there waiting,holding on, still hesitating
We say a prayer of levitating, in my heaven
You can look back on your life and lot
But it can't matter what you're not
By the time you're here, we're all we've got
In my heaven
In my heaven
In my heaven
O.I.U
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Ok it's 40 days to Graduation...now what?
I have been looking forward to graduation since the first day I stepped on campus. Now graduation is only 40days away and I feel like I am not even remotely ready for the real world...I might need an extra semester....4 years went by toooooo fast. I entered college wanting to be criminal justice and psychology double major, 4 years later I am about to leave college with an Honors Bachelor's Degree in Mass Communication and English. changing my majors was the best decision I ever made. I looove looove loooove the world of public relations and all the headache that comes with it. For one thing, I know I am definitely smarter and more knowledgeable today than I was 4 years ago, but I am so scared of being thrust into the fast paced life of corporate communications or the crazy world of entertainement publicity.
Do I want to go into the real world, full-time job, bills, responsibilities? Do I still wanna remain in the Ideal academic world with a rote schedule: class, homework, tests, exam and maybe part-time job?
If anyone knows the easy way out please let me know...coz I sure don't.
O.I.U
Do I want to go into the real world, full-time job, bills, responsibilities? Do I still wanna remain in the Ideal academic world with a rote schedule: class, homework, tests, exam and maybe part-time job?
If anyone knows the easy way out please let me know...coz I sure don't.
O.I.U
Africa: Forgotten or Misrepresented?
Africa: Forgotten or Misrepresented?
If ever a place labored under a set of stereotypes, it is Africa. The image of Africa in the American mind, is worse than incomplete, it is inaccurate. Whether they perceive it as a land of barbarous political extremes or as a stunning setting for tracking wildlife, Americans have long tended to reduce the vast continent to a list of clichés.
The coverage of Africa and its people by the Western media is seen by Africans as biased and strife-driven. Africa makes the headlines often when there are pictures of starving children, civil wars, and military coups and United States military actions on the continent. This geographically, politically and culturally vast continent remains among the least well understood of the world’s regions. Andrew Hart, author of teaching the media, asserts that “News coverage of Africa has often been of poor quality, inclining towards stereotypes and misinformation.
Although home to 800 million people, Africa simply does not receive the amount of media attention that other regions of the world do. This is not a new phenomenon as various researchers have documented the decline and continuing lack of media coverage of Africa over the last 40 years.
The media portray a distorted picture. Crises in Darfur, the Congo, Biafra and Ethiopia, amongst others capture headlines. Many stories surge to the headlines and disappear quickly, leaving Americans with little understanding of the continent or the politics that drive it. Americans are left to believe that Africa is a confusing place with instability in government, society, and even country names. Most Americans have never visited Africa and will never visit Africa, yet there is an image of Africa in the American mind.
In the immediate post-colonial period, Africa was still covered in a considered and serious fashion. Even middle market papers in America and Europe had several African specialists and had correspondents based in Africa who filed on a regular basis and offered informed comments on African affairs. Dr. Franks of the Westminster Council on Culture and Communication says “Now, it appears that Africa was interesting as long as it was perceived as an end of Empire Narrative.”
Since the end of Colonization, Africa no longer commands the same level of coverage in the West. The end of the European colonialism in Africa coincided with the division of the world into two power blocs of opposite ideological persuasion, plungering the world into a bitter Cold War in which the respective leaders of the blocs, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in an intense rivalry. Africa inevitably became a fertile ground for these two powers’ intervention in the race to fill the perceived vacuum left by the colonial powers.
During the Cold War years (1950-1989), the United States sent $1.5 billion in arms and training to Africa thus setting the stage for the current round of conflicts. Africa inevitably became the battleground for opposing capitalist and communist ideologies, a battle fought to the death in Africa.
Appalling atrocities committed by the South African proxy troops in Angola and Mozambique, and the opportunistic propping up by both superpower blocs of repressive governments all over Africa whose policies resulted in famine, war, and pestilence. Africa as a victim of international power relations is then blamed for the result.
When the Western news media outlets report the horrific consequences of these wars, they often portray Africans as victims and helpless people waiting to die, but they never mention the cause of the resulting deaths. From 1991 to 1995, the United States increased the amount of weapons and other military assistance to fifty of the total fifty-four African countries.
The United States funded wars have been responsible for the deaths of millions of Africans and subsequent displacement. There was still fighting and wars but they were no longer explicable through either a colonial or a cold war paradigm and were often dismissed as ‘tribal’ or ‘ethnic’ conflict – neither of which were comprehensible or worthy of much interest.
The Western media simply misses many of the important aspects of the wars that were fought and the wars that are continued to be fought, they missed many of the most important aspects of the famine caused by this war; one of which was the destabilizing impact of the struggle for dominance being waged in the region by the United States and the Soviet Union.
Studies indicate that about 80 percent of the international news that flow through the newsrooms across the globe come from the four major news agencies – Reuters, Agence France Presse, United Press International and the Associated Press – and international cable news networks – CNN and BBC. Of this, about 20 percent is devoted to developing countries, which account for almost three-quarters of world population.
The tsunami that ravaged Indian Ocean coastal regions on December 26, 2004 garnered more English language media coverage in the first two months after it struck than other “forgotten” crises in the world – six of them in Africa – have received in two years.
A very popular image that the Western media projects on Africa is that of abject poverty and widespread diseases. Many Americans have images of Africa that are anachronistic, partial, and often inaccurate. According to former Secretary of State George Schultz, “the perception of Africa that most of us grew up with – unknown lands somehow exotic and divorced from the rest of the world – has unfortunately persisted in some quarters despite the last [45] years of Africa’s independence and increasing presence in the world stage. It is a misconception that ignores compelling realities.
The American audiences see it all the time, and with increasing frequency of late: full-color photographs of mostly poor, starving African men, women and children, staring hollow-eyed from newsstands. These visuals are usually accompanied by woeful, hopeless, doomsday articles about famine, death and debt. The writers of these articles who in no shape or form look African, or at the very least are not black, predict the imminent tragedy if the rest of the ‘developed’ world doesn’t step in soon and save uncivilized, savage Africa from itself.
The typical Western foreign correspondent in Africa is one who arrives in one of the major cities like Lagos, Nairobi, Accra or Addis Ababa already certain that there is nothing fundamental, let alone of educative value which he could possibly find in the ‘dark continent’. But since he must send home some copy in order to justify the investment in him, he concludes that his readers in New York as well as in Switzerland, can at least be titillated with bits of gossip and quaint exotic happenings.
A garbage dump in Newark is more aesthetically pleasing than the same in the big city of Lagos, Nigeria. Violent crime in Kenya is more hideous than the same in New York or Chicago. The Son of Sam is a heroic figure in comparison with a desperate thief in Lagos.
While an African discusses his country today as part of the changing world, the American keeps talking of Africa of 20 years ago. American foreign correspondents, at least those who work in Africa, know nothing about empathy and humility. For American readers or viewers to be interested, news out of Africa must be negative. It must conform to traditional stereotypes in its spotlight on grotesque and sensational events. It must show misery, corruption, mismanagement, starvation, primitive surroundings and, as in the case of Somalia, chaos and outright anarchy.
Why do the media choose to portray such an image of despair and complete hopelessness? Several reasons have been suggested as to why the Western media continues to portray a skewed and biased image of Africa. Foreign correspondents in African capitals and their superiors in the media gate-keeping chain seem to already have certain perceptions ingrained in them. From newsgathering in Africa to publication and broadcast thousands of miles away, stories about Africa are looked at with these negative lenses. Even more unfortunately, reporters with a broader vision run the risk of having their stories disbelieved and unused, so the reporters learn to toe the line.
This dynamic explains why the life of Africa’s varied and diverse countries is missing. According to Ruth Mayer, author and professor of American Studies at the University of Hanover, Germany, “We hear about famines and coups, but not the rejuvenations of its cities and the cultural vitality of its village life…about oppression and massacres, but not of education, economic self help and political development… about poaching and habitat destruction, but not ongoing active efforts at conservation, reforestation and environmental awareness”
The Western media automatically assumes that Americans are not interested in meaningful developmental stories about Africa because they are mundane and commercially unattractive. Unless a celebrity or a royal visits, regular news is not reported. A journalist who tries to sell anything positive about Africa cannot sell his story. Subjects other than war and disaster cannot be sold internationally.
The media is a business, and advertising drives the business. Even though American media pretends to present news as an objective and unbiased account of events in society, in reality news is a commodity and like other commodities, it is open to the impositions of commercial imperatives. Thus, profit maximization influences the determination of events as newsworthy by American media and also determines how they allocate their resources all over the world. The primary goal of the media is to make money, the media select and present news stories in ways that make them commercially viable. This is why the American media prefer to emphasize coups and earthquake news. stories and why the Tarzan and jungle image of Africa is so appealing to American media.
The belief that American viewers aren't interested in international stories and the infotainment of news has scarred foreign news reporting. Journalists’ are reluctant to pursue so-called ‘positive stories.’ Such stories do not win awards or get front-page, above-the-fold placement. But what's happening in Africa doesn't need to be cast in any special light. The Ghana Stock Exchange was the fastest-growing exchange in the world in 2003. That's not a ‘positive’ story, that's news, just like reports on the London Stock Exchange. A lot of consumers would have found it newsworthy to learn where they could have made a 144 percent return on their money.
Western beliefs about Africa have constructed an image of Africa as the repository of our greatest fears. The colonial image has become the media image. Image becomes fact. The image of Africa has important ramifications beyond American public opinions and foreign policy. Media set out the categories – primitive/modern – and define the concepts recognizable to readers and viewers. The metaphors used when reporting this news condemn armed resistance of Africans as dysfunctional and primitive.
At the top of the 20th century Africa remains the most misunderstood of the continents, crippled in imagination by images rooted in the minds of imperial Europeans who attempted to shape and invent an Africa useful to their political ambitions.
O.I.U
If ever a place labored under a set of stereotypes, it is Africa. The image of Africa in the American mind, is worse than incomplete, it is inaccurate. Whether they perceive it as a land of barbarous political extremes or as a stunning setting for tracking wildlife, Americans have long tended to reduce the vast continent to a list of clichés.
The coverage of Africa and its people by the Western media is seen by Africans as biased and strife-driven. Africa makes the headlines often when there are pictures of starving children, civil wars, and military coups and United States military actions on the continent. This geographically, politically and culturally vast continent remains among the least well understood of the world’s regions. Andrew Hart, author of teaching the media, asserts that “News coverage of Africa has often been of poor quality, inclining towards stereotypes and misinformation.
Although home to 800 million people, Africa simply does not receive the amount of media attention that other regions of the world do. This is not a new phenomenon as various researchers have documented the decline and continuing lack of media coverage of Africa over the last 40 years.
The media portray a distorted picture. Crises in Darfur, the Congo, Biafra and Ethiopia, amongst others capture headlines. Many stories surge to the headlines and disappear quickly, leaving Americans with little understanding of the continent or the politics that drive it. Americans are left to believe that Africa is a confusing place with instability in government, society, and even country names. Most Americans have never visited Africa and will never visit Africa, yet there is an image of Africa in the American mind.
In the immediate post-colonial period, Africa was still covered in a considered and serious fashion. Even middle market papers in America and Europe had several African specialists and had correspondents based in Africa who filed on a regular basis and offered informed comments on African affairs. Dr. Franks of the Westminster Council on Culture and Communication says “Now, it appears that Africa was interesting as long as it was perceived as an end of Empire Narrative.”
Since the end of Colonization, Africa no longer commands the same level of coverage in the West. The end of the European colonialism in Africa coincided with the division of the world into two power blocs of opposite ideological persuasion, plungering the world into a bitter Cold War in which the respective leaders of the blocs, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in an intense rivalry. Africa inevitably became a fertile ground for these two powers’ intervention in the race to fill the perceived vacuum left by the colonial powers.
During the Cold War years (1950-1989), the United States sent $1.5 billion in arms and training to Africa thus setting the stage for the current round of conflicts. Africa inevitably became the battleground for opposing capitalist and communist ideologies, a battle fought to the death in Africa.
Appalling atrocities committed by the South African proxy troops in Angola and Mozambique, and the opportunistic propping up by both superpower blocs of repressive governments all over Africa whose policies resulted in famine, war, and pestilence. Africa as a victim of international power relations is then blamed for the result.
When the Western news media outlets report the horrific consequences of these wars, they often portray Africans as victims and helpless people waiting to die, but they never mention the cause of the resulting deaths. From 1991 to 1995, the United States increased the amount of weapons and other military assistance to fifty of the total fifty-four African countries.
The United States funded wars have been responsible for the deaths of millions of Africans and subsequent displacement. There was still fighting and wars but they were no longer explicable through either a colonial or a cold war paradigm and were often dismissed as ‘tribal’ or ‘ethnic’ conflict – neither of which were comprehensible or worthy of much interest.
The Western media simply misses many of the important aspects of the wars that were fought and the wars that are continued to be fought, they missed many of the most important aspects of the famine caused by this war; one of which was the destabilizing impact of the struggle for dominance being waged in the region by the United States and the Soviet Union.
Studies indicate that about 80 percent of the international news that flow through the newsrooms across the globe come from the four major news agencies – Reuters, Agence France Presse, United Press International and the Associated Press – and international cable news networks – CNN and BBC. Of this, about 20 percent is devoted to developing countries, which account for almost three-quarters of world population.
The tsunami that ravaged Indian Ocean coastal regions on December 26, 2004 garnered more English language media coverage in the first two months after it struck than other “forgotten” crises in the world – six of them in Africa – have received in two years.
A very popular image that the Western media projects on Africa is that of abject poverty and widespread diseases. Many Americans have images of Africa that are anachronistic, partial, and often inaccurate. According to former Secretary of State George Schultz, “the perception of Africa that most of us grew up with – unknown lands somehow exotic and divorced from the rest of the world – has unfortunately persisted in some quarters despite the last [45] years of Africa’s independence and increasing presence in the world stage. It is a misconception that ignores compelling realities.
The American audiences see it all the time, and with increasing frequency of late: full-color photographs of mostly poor, starving African men, women and children, staring hollow-eyed from newsstands. These visuals are usually accompanied by woeful, hopeless, doomsday articles about famine, death and debt. The writers of these articles who in no shape or form look African, or at the very least are not black, predict the imminent tragedy if the rest of the ‘developed’ world doesn’t step in soon and save uncivilized, savage Africa from itself.
The typical Western foreign correspondent in Africa is one who arrives in one of the major cities like Lagos, Nairobi, Accra or Addis Ababa already certain that there is nothing fundamental, let alone of educative value which he could possibly find in the ‘dark continent’. But since he must send home some copy in order to justify the investment in him, he concludes that his readers in New York as well as in Switzerland, can at least be titillated with bits of gossip and quaint exotic happenings.
A garbage dump in Newark is more aesthetically pleasing than the same in the big city of Lagos, Nigeria. Violent crime in Kenya is more hideous than the same in New York or Chicago. The Son of Sam is a heroic figure in comparison with a desperate thief in Lagos.
While an African discusses his country today as part of the changing world, the American keeps talking of Africa of 20 years ago. American foreign correspondents, at least those who work in Africa, know nothing about empathy and humility. For American readers or viewers to be interested, news out of Africa must be negative. It must conform to traditional stereotypes in its spotlight on grotesque and sensational events. It must show misery, corruption, mismanagement, starvation, primitive surroundings and, as in the case of Somalia, chaos and outright anarchy.
Why do the media choose to portray such an image of despair and complete hopelessness? Several reasons have been suggested as to why the Western media continues to portray a skewed and biased image of Africa. Foreign correspondents in African capitals and their superiors in the media gate-keeping chain seem to already have certain perceptions ingrained in them. From newsgathering in Africa to publication and broadcast thousands of miles away, stories about Africa are looked at with these negative lenses. Even more unfortunately, reporters with a broader vision run the risk of having their stories disbelieved and unused, so the reporters learn to toe the line.
This dynamic explains why the life of Africa’s varied and diverse countries is missing. According to Ruth Mayer, author and professor of American Studies at the University of Hanover, Germany, “We hear about famines and coups, but not the rejuvenations of its cities and the cultural vitality of its village life…about oppression and massacres, but not of education, economic self help and political development… about poaching and habitat destruction, but not ongoing active efforts at conservation, reforestation and environmental awareness”
The Western media automatically assumes that Americans are not interested in meaningful developmental stories about Africa because they are mundane and commercially unattractive. Unless a celebrity or a royal visits, regular news is not reported. A journalist who tries to sell anything positive about Africa cannot sell his story. Subjects other than war and disaster cannot be sold internationally.
The media is a business, and advertising drives the business. Even though American media pretends to present news as an objective and unbiased account of events in society, in reality news is a commodity and like other commodities, it is open to the impositions of commercial imperatives. Thus, profit maximization influences the determination of events as newsworthy by American media and also determines how they allocate their resources all over the world. The primary goal of the media is to make money, the media select and present news stories in ways that make them commercially viable. This is why the American media prefer to emphasize coups and earthquake news. stories and why the Tarzan and jungle image of Africa is so appealing to American media.
The belief that American viewers aren't interested in international stories and the infotainment of news has scarred foreign news reporting. Journalists’ are reluctant to pursue so-called ‘positive stories.’ Such stories do not win awards or get front-page, above-the-fold placement. But what's happening in Africa doesn't need to be cast in any special light. The Ghana Stock Exchange was the fastest-growing exchange in the world in 2003. That's not a ‘positive’ story, that's news, just like reports on the London Stock Exchange. A lot of consumers would have found it newsworthy to learn where they could have made a 144 percent return on their money.
Western beliefs about Africa have constructed an image of Africa as the repository of our greatest fears. The colonial image has become the media image. Image becomes fact. The image of Africa has important ramifications beyond American public opinions and foreign policy. Media set out the categories – primitive/modern – and define the concepts recognizable to readers and viewers. The metaphors used when reporting this news condemn armed resistance of Africans as dysfunctional and primitive.
At the top of the 20th century Africa remains the most misunderstood of the continents, crippled in imagination by images rooted in the minds of imperial Europeans who attempted to shape and invent an Africa useful to their political ambitions.
O.I.U
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