Press Freedom in Africa?

Philip M. Stone June 4, 2007

“Media freedom in Africa is held captive both by the state and by the market," according to Zambian media analyst Fackson Banda, speaking at a press freedom in Africa roundtable at the WAN convention in Cape Town Sunday.

He explained that many media were nationalized upon a country’s independence, and that gave the state control. For those that managed to remain independent then the never-ending battle became fighting market forces, made even more difficult in an environment that appeared to encourage media ownership concentration, and with investment money hard to come by.

And if state-control wasn’t enough, the state also wields economic powers when it doesn’t  like what independent newspapers might write, such as withdrawing advertising or taxing newsprint.

Many African newsrooms are also severely under-resourced, according to Azubuike Ishiekwene, the executive director of publications for Punch Nigeria Limited. Add to that such problems as poor newsroom management skills, weak economies, weak regulatory institutions and sloppy ethics, and it becomes clear why it is difficult to produce the quality of newspaper that the continent deserves.

Solutions, he said, included African newspaper houses sharing resources for the common good, self-regulatory media frameworks, freedom of information laws and more creative use of information technology and cell phones.

From a journalist’s point of view how difficult can it be to work in some African countries? "A great many journalists in Africa work with a gun to their head or a threat of a gun to their head," said press freedom activist Raymond Louw.  Pius Njawe from Cameroon told delegates he knows the difficulties first-hand. He has been arrested 126 times in his 26 years as a journalist.

Although not mentioned at the convention, an incident last week at the opening of a new radio station in Senegal, owned by a newspaper publisher, proves how difficult African media life can be. In Dakar, Senegal,  as new radio station  Premiere FM started transmission tests the police arrived and said the tests had to stop. The owner refused so security agents hauled away enough equipment to take the station off the air.

The owner, Madiambal Diagne, publisher of two independent newspapers, spent time in jail in 2004 after upsetting authorities with critical coverage. Premiere FM is licensed as a news and information radio station. The station has apparently been banned from broadcasting for 45 days.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela had planned to attend the WAN convention, but his doctors ordered him not to travel. In a note he told delegates, “This old pensioner must tell you that he is still a newspaperman himself. Not a day goes by when I don't read every newspaper I can lay my hands on, wherever I am. Sometimes my staff will try to hide a paper from me if they think there is something in it that will upset me. But as I have always said, newspapers allow us to hold a mirror up to ourselves, and we must be brave enough to look squarely at the reflection.

“My friends, let your watchwords be: truth and freedom.”

Just a week before the delegates arrived a South African Parliamentary Committee exempted print and broadcast media from a contentious censorship bill that would have required stories of a sexual nature or those deemed to be hate speech or that could possibly incite war to be submitted to the Film and Publication Board before publication.

South Africa this year celebrates 150 years of newspaper journalism.

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