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The Image of Africa in Ghana's Press Global Communications Michael Serwornoo The Image of Africa in Ghana’s Press The Infuence of Global News Organisations To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: htps://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/1244 Open Book Publishers is a non-proft independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. THE IMAGE OF AFRICA IN GHANA’S PRESS The Image of Africa in Ghana’s Press The Influence of International News Agencies Michael Yao Wodui Serwornoo https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2021 Michael Yao Wodui Serwornoo This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Michael Yao Wodui Serwornoo, The Image of Africa in Ghana’s Press: The Infuence of International News Agencies. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2021, https://doi. org/10.11647/OBP.0227 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit, https:// doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0227#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0227#resources Global Communications vol. 2 | ISSN 2634-7245 (Print) | 2634-7253 (Online) ISBN Paperback: 9781800640412 ISBN Hardback: 9781800640429 ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781800640436 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781800640443 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781800640450 ISBN XML: 9781800640467 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0227 Cover design by Anna Gatti based on a photo by Duangphorn Wiriya on Unsplash at https://unsplash.com/photos/KiMpFTtuuAk Table of Contents Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 1. Historical and Contextual Antecedents 11 2. Beneftting from the State of the Art 29 3. Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks 63 4. Methodology 89 5. Portrayal of Africa: Results of Ethnographic Content 109 Analysis 6. Postcolonial Trajectories of the Ghanaian Press: 137 Discussing Actors, Conditions and the Power Dynamics 7. Discussing Africa’s Media Image in Ghana: A Synergy of 165 Actors, Conditions and Representations Appendices 197 References 209 Index 233 In memory of Alice Wodui Fekpe 1928 –2019 Mum In honour of The School of International and Intercultural Communication The collaborative graduate school founded by Prof. Dr. Susanne Fengler (TU Dortmund), Prof. Dr. Barbara Thomaß (Ruhr-University Bochum), Prof. Dr. Jens Loenhoff (University of Duisburg-Essen) Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to my academic supervisors, Prof. Dr. Barbara Thomaß and Prof. Dr. Susanne Fengler who have been quite supportive of my journey into the academy. They have joined the ranks of other signifcant women in my life: my Mum Alice Wodui Fekpe, my sisters Margaret, Theodora and Regina, Dr. Hilde Hofmann, Tina Bettels- Schwabbauer, Dr. Julia Lönnendonker, Elsie Acquaisie and Angelina Koomson-Barnes. I am grateful to the School of International and Intercultural Communication (SIIC) and its hardworking team of professors. I am equally appreciative of Dr. Dirk Claas-Ulrich and members of my dissertation committee: Prof. Dr. Barbara Thomaß, Prof. Dr. Susanne Fengler, Prof. Dr. Annette Pankratz and Prof. Dr. Peter M. Spangenberg. I am thankful to Michele Gonnelli, with whom I shared an ofce and several other private spaces. I am also grateful to the entire SIIC doctoral cohort including Caroline Lindekamp, Bettina Haasen, Till Wäscher, Florian Meißner, Darlene Nalih Musoro, Ann Mabel Sanyu, Marcus Kreutler and Abeer Saady. I am also indebted to workers of the Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism for all the friendly supports they have ofered me during this research. I would like to mention in particular the warmth of Olaf Batholome, Monika Bartholome, Nadia Leih, Mariela Bastin, Fabian Karl, Raimer Simons, Gordon Wuellner and Carina Zappe. I am grateful to the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) Research School for providing funds for the study. I am thankful to my “secret doctoral committee,” at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication in the University of Oklahoma, USA, which included Prof. Dr. Gade, Prof. Dr. Craig, Dr. Shugofa and Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Nduka. Living in Germany for the most part of this study, I can say for sure that I miss my time of worship at the New Apostolic Church in x The Image of Africa in Ghana’s Press Unna-Massen-Priest Christof Krebs and the late Frau Asta Kruger. I am especially thankful for my friend and doctor who took very good care of my health — Dr. Med. Christoph Päuser. I have very vivid memories of the support from my academic mentor, Dr. Andrews Ofori Birikorang, who was such an inspiration to me every time I met with him. I am so grateful for the inspiration and phone calls from my family and friends in London. My sincerest gratitude goes to Mr. and Mrs. Eugene and Vivian Malcolm-Fynn, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph and Michaela Frimpong, Mr. and Mrs. Sakyi Djan and Mr. and Mrs. Sam Brew, Rosemary Akweley Charway and Francisca Aku Akubor. Introduction Media coverage of Africa has historically been analysed using diferent approaches and from the vantage point of diferent geographical locations. Academic literature of the late 1970s and 80s highlights the negativity and bias on the part of developed nations not only in the way they write about Africa but also regarding their control of international news fow due to the growing infuence of a hegemonic private press (Nordenstreng, 2012; Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1997; Hawk, 1992; Sreberny, 1985; Stevenson and Shaw, 1984; Nordenstreng and Schiller, 1979; Galtung, 1971; Galtung and Ruge, 1965). This literature seems to suggest that a socially constructed discourse about Africa, which has come to be known as Afro-pessimism, has either improved in the wake of Africa rising discourse (Bunce, Franks and Paterson, 2017, Nothias, 2015; Ojo, 2014) or is in fact a non-existent myth (Scott, 2015). Indeed, recent publications argue that the claim of negative representation has no validity beyond certain few Western countries (Scott, 2017; Obijiofor and MacKinnon, 2016). New studies continue to adduce empirical evidence of Africa’s negative portrayal in US elite press and of how this coverage spreads around the world (Gruley and Duvall, 2012). In this book, I trace these debates by examining the nature of the continent’s coverage in the Ghanaian press with a focus on the dominant themes of representation, subject matter and tone of the coverage. I will also ofer explanations for Africa’s depiction in the press by journalists and editors, their newsroom exigencies and the world beyond these two contexts. © Michael Yao Wodui Serwornoo, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0227.08 2 The Image of Africa in Ghana’s Press Background Due to the historical implications of the use of communication technology by the Persian, Greek, Roman and British empires, communication across borders continues to occupy the minds of many researchers today (Thussu, 2000). However, an early attempt to explain the coverage of one country by another became prominent through the work of Johan Galtung, who introduced the Centre–Periphery model in which he attempted to explain the inequality within and between nations, and why that phenomenon was resistant to change. These inequalities and imbalances in international news fow, highlighted by Galtung, account for the persistent complaints of developing nations regarding their coverage in the Northern press (Galtung, 1971; Galtung and Ruge, 1965). The attempts in scholarly literature to explain how nations cover each other were inadequate in establishing the necessary credibility of these imbalances. In fact, prior to the publication of UNESCO’s MacBride Commission report (1980), the claims made by developing nations regarding their negative portrayal by Western media, which subsequently reinforced prejudices in the West, remained largely allegations. In addition to the UNESCO publication, several other studies, in particular those examining the portrayal of Africa in other countries, have been published (Bunce et al. 2017; Mody, 2010; Chang and Lee, 1992; El Zein and Cooper, 1992). The Western media has consistently refuted the claim that it represents Africa and other parts of the world through a negative lens. They argue that the term “Western press” is a generalisation referring to the press in the US and the UK. According to Jonathan Graubart (1989), the refutations by the Northern Hemisphere, led by the US, require a review. In the California Law Review, Graubart suggests that when the US evaluates proposals for change to the negative coverage of developing countries, it should move away from “the pious sanctity of its private press and rather attempt to pragmatically consider what steps it can take to further the economic and socio-cultural conditions in the Third world by reversing the consequences of centuries of negative coverage” (p. 631). A detailed look at how African journalists portray countries on the continent could provide us with useful insights with which to assess the gravity of Western dominance over foreign news businesses, and help Introduction 3 us to understand how this has promoted dependency and hegemony. Thus far, existing research eforts have described how the media in the dominant Northern Hemisphere (Western nations) continue to negatively represent Africa, with little improvement (Bunce, 2017; Nothias, 2015). Recent publications have analysed other developed nations beyond those already implicated and have found this entire claim to be a non-existent myth (Obijiofor and MacKinnon, 2016; Scott, 2015).
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