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Africanreview of Political Economy AfricanREVIEW OF Political Economy EDITORS: The Review of African Political Economy Chris Allen and Jan Burgess (ROAPE) is published quarterly by Carfax Publishing Company for the ROAPE BOOK REVIEWS: international collective. Now 24 years old, Ray Bush, Roy Love and Morris Szeftel ROAPE is a fully refereed journal covering all aspects of African political economy. ROAPE has always involved the readership in shaping EDITORIAL WORKING GROUP: Chris Allen, Carolyn Baylies, Lyn Brydon, the journal's coverage, welcoming Janet Bujra, Jan Burgess, Ray Bush, Carolyne contributions from grass roots organisations, Dennis, Anita Franklin, Jon Knox, Roy Love, women's organisations, trade unions and Giles Mohan, Colin Murray, Mike Powell, political groups. The journal is unique in the Stephen Riley, David Seddon, David Simon, comprehensiveness of its bibliographic Colin Stoneman, Morris Szeftel, Tina referencing, information monitoring, Wallace, Gavin Williams, A. B. Zack- statistical documentation and coverage of Williams work-in-progress. CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Editorial correspondence, including Africa: Rok Ajulu (Grahamstown), manuscripts for submission, should be sent Yusuf Bangura (Zaria), Billy Cobbett to Jan Burgess, ROAPE Publications Ltd, (Johannesburg), Antonieta Coelho (Luanda), P.O. Box 678, Sheffield SI 1BF, UK. Bill Freund (Durban), Jibril Ibrahim (Zaria), Tel: 44 +(0)1226 +74.16.60; Fax 44 +(0)1226 Amadina Lihamba (Dar es Salaam), +74.16.61; [email protected]. Mahmood Mamdani (Cape Town), Trevor Parfitt (Cairo), Lloyd Sachikonye (Harare), Business correspondence, including orders Carol Thompson (Arizona); Canada: and remittances relating to subscriptions, Jonathan Barker (Toronto), Bonnie Campbell advertisements, back numbers and offprints, (Montreal), Dixon Eyoh (Toronto), John should be addressed to Carfax Publishing Ltd, Loxley (Winnipeg), John Saul (Toronto); P.O. Box 25, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 Europe: Bjorn Beckman (Stockholm), M. R. 3UE, UK. Tel: 44 +(0)1235 +55.53.35; Fax: Bhagavan (Stockholm), Jean Copans (Paris), 44+(0)1235+55.35.59. Martin Doornbos (The Hague), Piotr Dutkiewicz (Warsaw), Tore Linne Eriksen (Oslo), Paul Goodison (Brussels), John Permission to reprint or translate material Markakis (Crete), Claude Meillassoux (Paris), from Review of African Political Economy Ken Post (The Hague), Francis Snyder should be sought from ROAPE Publications (Florence), Tamas Szentes (Budapest); US: Ltd. Consent to copy for general distribution, Hussein Adam (Holy Cross), Prexy Nesbitt for promotion, for creating new work, or for (Chicago), Betsey Schmidt (Loyola College), resale must be specifically obtained in writing Meredeth Turshen (Rutgers), Gloria Thomas- from ROAPE Publications Ltd. Emeagwali (Central Connecticut); UK: A. M. Babu (1924-1996), Lionel Cliffe, Basil Davidson, Raufu Mustafa (Zaria), Phil ISSN 0305-6244 O'Keefe, Peter Lawrence, Pepe Roberts and Kevin Watkins. ©1998 ROAPE Publications Ltd Review of African Political Economy No.78:545-550 © ROAPE Publications Ltd., 1998 ISSN 0305-6244; RIX#7801 Whose News? Control of the Media in Africa Anita Franklin & Roy Love In deciding to devote an issue of the Review to 'the media' in Africa it soon became obvious that we would have to be selective. There is no way that a single issue of a journal devoted to continental coverage could accurately reflect what is a vast and heterogenous field, containing widely differing interpretations of the term 'media'. The usage of the term ranges from references to the various means of popular entertainment, mainly via radio, television and film, through to news reporting by a variety of channels, both internal and external to the country being reported on; and it may also apply to other information processing and transmission, often for educational purposes at popular level such as AIDS awareness or public health programmes, while finally it can embrace the subtle and not so subtle world of advertising and product promotion by international and local companies. The very act of selection, however, also serves to highlight a substantial gap in outlets for debate and analysis of contemporary trends in Africa in this important area. In the western academy the study of 'media' tends to be a sub-set of the more broad ranging and eclectic discipline of 'cultural studies'. Although the use of post- modernist approaches can seem rather esoteric and removed from political economy, insights from that quarter can nonetheless generate an awareness of how messages and meanings are created and controlled and have lessons for observers of and in Africa. The construction of messages during the 'encoding' of news, or entertainment production, passes through filters of language, often one alien to the viewers and listeners, of ideology, usually a westernised capitalistic one, and of history, usually that of the powerful, in an interlinked network which not only predetermines the message and its form but also the world view of the recipient through past contacts from related sources. None of this is new, of course and classic analyses are found in the work of Gurevitch et al. (1982) and in Herman and Chomsky (1988) and in the implications of communications theory when overlaid with dominant beliefs and values (Fiske, 1990). In recent years a greater awareness of media bias at various levels has emerged, prompted in many respects by the aftermath of the Gulf war on the one hand and by confusion and doubt over the role of media in complex emergency situations such as those witnessed in recent years in central Africa. Increasingly we find ourselves asking to what extent has the media become an (over-influential) actor in the events which it portrays? Care is needed, however, in distinguishing between overt political control of media content, whether from national or international state controlled agencies, in both peace and war situations, and the less explicit forms which permeate like an 'argument of insidious intent' through the filters described by Herman and Chomsky in their 'propaganda model': filters, that is, of ownership, advertisers, news sources, 546 Revieiv of African Political Economy and what they termed 'flak and anti-communism'. As institutionalised phenomena such filters are the more threatening to freedom and democracy in the long run. This distinction between open and institutional forms of control is paralleled with another; that of ownership and ideology. To the extent that one still talks about the concentration and centralisation of capital the pattern that appears to be emerging in international and national media ownership conforms with expectations. Although scope exists within the technology for smaller independent operators (and some of these possibilities are indicated by Paterson in this issue) the larger scene is increasingly dominated by multinationals like Time-Warner, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and Sony. The political economy of media ownership, its concentration and its implications for programme content (whether in TV, film, video, radio, newsprint, or electronic form) is as much a matter of concern as is dominance of the food, armaments or automotive industries within a globalised capitalism. This presumes private ownership of course, and given this, the primary objective in content selection must remain the presentation of receptive audiences to advertisers. Concentration in one sense is therefore irrelevant while the dominant parameters are dictated by the market. Globally, however, multinationals are more effective deliverers of a uniform neo-liberal world view. In linking news, entertainment and information content to capitalist market forces it becomes evident therefore that the values and beliefs, the ideology, of that set of social forces must permeate the production, dissemination and absorptive process. This, of course, is nothing new, and it is the prior dispensation through colonial discourse and its subsequent manifestations within neo-colonial dependency mechanisms that makes so much of contemporary media content from the west appear uncritically acceptable to audiences elsewhere around the globe. This extends to the respect given to BBC world news, and to the apparent authority with which other international news broadcasters are received. In other words, it is not only the purveyors of news and entertainment, the 'encoders' in Hall's terms, that carry the cultural legacy of colonialism within their discourse but also the recipients as they 'decode' with a mixed set of values from that same past. At least two major strands may be picked up from this. One is the perception of Africa itself that is portrayed and another is the accusation of cultural imperialism. A third aspect relates to the increasing technological sophistication which allows ever greater 'time-space compression' and the implications of this (see Barker, 1997). On the one hand, perhaps the latter marks greater opportunities for 'local' participation in the media, via internet, digital television. Who can say what difference this kind of participation could make to localities who are not seen as major players in the media? On the other hand, those with access to these new forms of media participation may not use them in ways that challenge the status quo. In recent years public perception of Africa in the west has been dominated by images of famine, war, refugees and state collapse, images that give credence to certain political analysts who forecast a 'coming anarchy' or Hunrington's 'new barbarism', and yet, paradoxically,
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