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Global Media Imbalance And Michael Peel’s Africa
By Uche
Nworah Section One:
Global Media Imbalance
The developing
world, Africa in particular has always argued against
the imbalances and injustices in the coverage of their
affairs by the western media. Such coverage is not only
paternalistic but most times grossly unfair, and serves
only to sustain the imperialistic interests of the
developed world.
Such imbalanced,
negative and biased reporting is bound to continue
because of the concentration of global media networks
and resources in the west.
It is indeed sad
that 26 years after the UNESCO sponsored
McBride Commission and Report, the recommendations
are yet to be fully implemented; the most significant of
which is the suggestion for ‘the progressive
implementation of national and international measures
that will foster the setting up of a new world
information and communication order’.
If anything, the
information divide between the developed and developing
countries has widened even further especially in this
digital age which is being driven by globalization and
technology. Africa and the rest of the developing world
have found themselves again lagging behind the west.
However, a little
goodwill and responsibility on the part of the western
media is really needed at this time to prevent the
continued psychological scares and damages, leading
sometimes to feelings of inferiority complex on the part
of the African as a result of continued
sensationalisation and criminalisation of everything
African.
Not all Africans
are criminals, rapists, and savages. Also, there are
many good things about Africa. Not all Africans live in
slums; neither do they all scavenge rubbish heaps for
food. Africa has also produced intellectuals and
academics that can stand their own in the western world.
Agreed the continent still faces peculiar challenges,
but so does the rest of the developed world.
A situation where
little efforts on the part of African governments and
their people to take control of their destiny are either
unreported, misreported, under-reported or acknowledged
with cynicism by the western media is unacceptable, and
does not indicate respect for the continent, neither
does it reflect the ideals of partnership, a concept
that Western leaders have been touting lately.
But why do the
western media still thrive on a culture of negative and
biased reporting of Africa and her people?
It could be as a
result of the need to improve ratings, which can only be
achieved by satisfying the mundane voyeuristic tastes
and expectations of the western media audience, whose
colonial views of Africa as the backward and dark
continent must be reinforced and sustained.
Also, it could be
as a result of the immoral culture and acceptance by the
western media that ‘bad news sells’, and hence news
about hunger in Sudan depicting dying children, or about
savagery in Rwanda must be sought and reported by all
means, even if at the sacrifice and expense of the
developmental needs of the African, as well as their
national interests.
Again, the McBride
Report was published at a time when global media
concentration was in the hands of national governments
and their agencies, the understanding must have been
that these governments would prevail on the media
networks through directed policies to encourage a new
world information and communication order. Because the
report is advisory in nature and relied on goodwill from
the stakeholders without any legislative powers to
enforce sanctions, it had remained merely what it is – a
report and doesn’t seem to have made much impact,
despite the efforts by Africans to set up the Pan
African News Agency (PANA), billed as the voice of
Africa to the world and representing the African
perspective, not much could be said to have been
achieved and it has been business as usual ever since.
Finally, the
greater concentration of global media networks in the
west, i.e. CNN, BBC, FOX, Reuters, AFP etc, coupled with
the availability of material and human resources have
meant that western media are able to come up first with
the news, as against African media networks such as
NTA, SABC,
PANA, NAN,
AIT etc who are still bogged by dearth of resources,
and therefore can not cope in the global news race, thus
limiting their chances of covering the African continent
positively. It is such that Africans have had to rely on
the western media for news coverage of events happenings
right under their noses, or in their back yards. The
western media are able to deploy resources even to the
remotest regions, they can afford to since they have
both the resources and personnel. Not the same can be
said of African media networks.
Africans may also
be guilty of helping to perpetuate this neo-colonialism;
western journalists and writers and their chauvinistic
views are culled, easily celebrated, and given media
spaces in African media channels, not minding that the
situation reversed becomes like the proverbial camel
passing through the eye of the needle for African
writers and journalists to be published in the western
media, with the exception of a few African writers and
journalists who maintain the western status quo,
unwilling to rock the boat.
Few incidents
reported recently in the United Kingdom (UK) media
drives home this point. The Tony Blair government has
been embroiled in a battle for political survival since
their battering at the last local government elections
in May 2006.
The Blair
government is looking for sacrificial lambs everywhere
to make up for the government’s ineptitude in certain
areas, and also to satisfy the interests of the media.
It appears that they have zeroed in on Africans and
other immigrants in the UK. The British media have now
successfully created the impression in the minds of the
ever increasing nationalistic UK citizens, that
immigrants are evil and criminal. Matters were also not
helped by the fact that
over a thousand dangerous criminals were mistakenly
released, some of whom allegedly were supposed to be
deported but weren’t as a result of a Home Office
error.
Newspapers such as
the Evening Standard went to town recently with a
screaming headline announcing that
5 Nigerian illegal immigrants were caught working in
the home office. A further analysis actually showed that
the immigrants in question worked as cleaners under
contract by another firm.
Such biased
headlines actually undermine the importance of
immigrants in most western economies. Considering the
low wages paid to workers in the cleaning and related
sectors, it remains to be seen if citizens of these
countries would agree to work such menial jobs at the
ludicrous wages the immigrants are paid for their
services.
It appears Nigeria
now represents everything evil in eyes of the western
media as they are quick to give front page coverage with
screaming headlines to matters concerning the country.
Take the case of
Dr Richard Akinrolabu, a
senior house officer at St Richard's Hospital,
Chichester who was accused by his lover and
colleague of attempting to carry out illegal abortion
procedures on her. The doctor was named and shamed in
front page headlines which were written along the lines
of ‘Nigerian Doctor …’ His accuser, the white woman did
not suffer the same fate. In the end, the case was
thrown out but not after the huge embarrassment to the
doctor and his fellow country men. You would expect the
media to also accord the not-guilty verdict the same
headlines and coverage but they did not.
Another example of
western media misreporting of Africa and Africans could
be seen in the case of
Guy Koma, who mistakenly became an interview guest
on the BBC News 24 programme. Due to a scheduling
mix-up, Mr Koma who had gone to the BBC centre for a job
interview was mistaken for the scheduled guest (Guy
Kewney) but still managed to ‘talk’ his way through the
session although he had no clue of the interview theme.
The UK media revelled in the story because of its human
interest angle but wrongly identified Mr Koma as a taxi
driver. Not that there is anything wrong with being a
taxi driver but the media’s judgment could only have
been influenced by their age-old prejudices as to the
type of jobs African immigrants do. It has since been
confirmed that Mr Koma was actually attending a job
interview in the IT department of BBC at the time of the
mix-up. There were no follow-up reports on whether he
got the job, not that Mr Koma cared anyway because he
has since signed a lucrative movie deal with an American
production company over the incident, and is billed to
play himself in the movie.
Section Two:
Michael Peel’s Africa
Perhaps Africa’s
and indeed Nigeria’s biggest enemy with regards to
negative and biased reporting is Michael Peel, I have
indeed tried to contain myself and to be patient with
this voyeur cum journalist but I can not hold myself
anymore. Not after his last
damning report and one-sided take on fraud and scams
purportedly emanating out of Nigeria which he claims
costs the United Kingdom billions annually.
As we say in
Nigeria, enough is enough. How long should we stand by
and watch this fellow dehumanise Africans and indeed
Nigerians with his negative take on the African
continent? This past week, most of the United Kingdom
newspapers have been awash with Mr Peel’s story,
conversations on tubes and buses and in offices have
been ignited once again with the story of Nigerians and
their financial invention – the 419 scam. But this is
not all that Nigerians are good at; unfortunately it is
the only one that Michael Peel chose to tell the world.
For people like me
who speak the English language flavoured with a thick
Nigerian accent, and who bear flag-waving African names,
there is no escaping the scorn, ‘sympathies’ and jeers.
As the West African correspondent of the Financial
Times Newspaper, Michael Peel has never found anything
good and positive in the whole sub-region worth
reporting, his reports are usually couched in cynicism,
threads of decay, death and backwardness knit them
together, just like the news reports of his fellow
western media journalists stationed in Africa whose only
mandate is to report the bad and ugly. For Michael Peel
and his associates, there is nothing good coming out of
Africa; Africa is still a dark continent and its people
savages and criminals.
I often wonder,
when they go to bed at night, do they calmly shut their
eyes with the satisfaction that they have done their
best through their many warped and negative reports to
improve the lives of the Africans whom they constantly
denigrate, or does the thought that they may be
contributing to Africa’s backwardness linger somewhere
on their minds?
As an associate
fellow of
Chatham House, does Michael Peel not realise that
the documents he authors and which are endorsed by
Chatham House in a way influences policies including the
decisions taken by governments and global investors
concerning Africa, and that such parochial take on
issues is at cross purposes with Africa, and indeed
Nigeria’s march towards national re-birth, and its
current drive to attract foreign direct investments (FDIs)?
Where has the
journalistic objectivity he learnt in journalism school
gone to? In telling his readers how much the United
Kingdom loses annually to fraud emanating from Nigeria,
he conveniently ignored the fact that his fellow
citizens (the ‘innocent’ victims) are also
co-perpetrators in the crime, and that their
‘misfortune’ only came about because of their greed and
immoral inclination to rape Africa and rob it of its
resources. A disposition that dates centuries and
continues to be witnessed in Africa’s many mines and oil
wells.
So who is smiling
last now? The poor Africans that he so much detests and
derides constantly, subjecting them to constant ridicule
in the western media, and elevating them to favourite
dinner table topics, and ballroom party conversations in
Westminster through his negative reports, or is it the
greedy white men and women who planned to reap where
they did not sow and got done in the process?
Maybe Michael Peel
should take a cue from
John Simpson, BBC’s former Africa correspondent and
world affairs editor who reports Africa just like a
partner in Africa’s progress and development should;
praising and critiquing it when necessary while at the
same time savouring, celebrating and immersing himself
in the culture of the people; their food, music, art,
and lifestyle. In one of Mr Simpson’s many introspective
essays published sometime in 2000, in an edition of
High Life, the British Airways in-flight magazine;
John Simpson wrote what I consider to be one of the most
beautiful articles about Nigeria ever written by a
non-Nigerian. In the said article, he bared his soul
while declaring his love for a country that he said was
probably one of the best countries in the world to live
in despite the odds and challenges. Surely there are
things Mr Simpson must have seen or experienced to have
made him arrive at such a conclusion. Such an
endorsement coming from a widely travelled man and
writer obviously beats the many battering at the
keyboards of the Michael Peels of this world who may
have overstayed their welcome, and should now be
thinking of packing their bags and leaving the beautiful
continent; the land of the great rivers and the rising
sun.
I guess it is only
Michael Peel that can produce the statistical formula he
used to arrive at the alleged amount of money the United
Kingdom loses annually to Nigerian fraudsters, if his
billion pounds calculations were true, would there have
still been a need for Nigeria and the rest of Africa to
be asking for debt cancellation? Would such gigantic
proceeds of crime not have been visible on the ground?
Would all the roads and pavements in Nigeria not be
tarred and paved with gold, and would the economy of the
United Kingdom not have seriously felt the impact of
such illegal capital flights moving out of the economy
to Nigeria?
Michael Peel
should please get another vocation and leave Nigeria and
Nigerians alone. Scare mongering is hardly what the
world needs at this stage, particularly the United
Kingdom which currently grapples with a myriad of issues
including large scale corporate fraud (post – Enron,
Andersen, WorldCom, Tyco etc), organized crime, poverty,
anti-social behaviours, teenage pregnancy, threat of
terrorism and rising unemployment etc. If he is so much
concerned, he should be trawling the studios of the BBC,
ITV, Channels 4 and 5 as well as Sky exhorting his
people and advising them not to give away their
‘billions of pounds’ to Nigerians.
Africans and their
governments share part of the blame for not fighting
their own battles themselves. They have repeatedly
failed to invest in their own media systems and
infrastructures with which to tell their own stories. It
may be along this line though that the Nigerian
government-owned Nigerian Television Authority (NTA)
recently started broadcasting internationally. Worthy of
note also is the reported plans by Nigeria’s News Agency
of Nigeria (NAN) to begin a 24-hour transmission from
January 2007, just like other global news wires. These
are all positive moves which if sustained in the longer
term would give Nigeria a voice on the global arena, in
addition to the little efforts of privately owned
terrestrial channels such as Africa Independent
Television (AIT),
Bright Entertainment Network (BEN)
Television, and OBE etc.
The attempt by Mr
Peel to palm off his guestimates as research in
order to support his position and those of his
paymasters is indeed appalling; if only he was sincere,
a casual probe would have told him that most of the scam
emails do not originate from Nigeria, agreed some
unscrupulous Nigerians may have popularised the scams
but other citizens of the world including citizens of
the United Kingdom have since perfected it. Mr Peel can
not argue for sure that the daily ‘Euro Millions Prize
Monies’ and such similar scam emails which bombard our
email boxes daily all originate from Nigeria, or does he
not watch the
BBC Watchdog programme? How many Nigerians have been
featured in that programme? Are the usual suspects not
his fellow countrymen and women who get caught in the
act while attempting to fleece other law abiding
citizens including pensioners of their hard earned
money?
The age-old
reliance by African countries on western media such as
the BBC, Financial Times, CNN, VOA etc for information
has not really done Africa much good. The time has come
for Africa and Africans to start telling their own
stories, and to commit Michael Peel and his
co-travellers who feast on Africa’s misfortunes, and are
always quick to condemn, judge, blame and criminalise
the good people of Africa with their myopic reports to
the rubbish bins of history.
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Uche Nworah
is a freelance writer and lecturer. December 2006.
info@uchenworah.com
posted 6 December 2006 |
