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ROOTS OF AN ETHOS OF INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM Independent newspapers tended to emerge profusely in Africa during the
late 1980s and the early 1990s in places where they had emerged before—in
Benin, Cameroon, Ghana, and Senegal, among others. As Richard Sandbrook
has observed, independent newspapers "did not spring from a vacuum.
. . . In some countries, they inherited a tradition of protest with its
roots in the anti-colonial struggle."30 In Benin,
a tradition of an outspoken, aggressive press dates to the early years
of French colonial rule during the first decade of the twentieth century.31
Such traditions stretch back even further in Ghana.32 However, a diverse and even thriving independent press also emerged during the early 1990s in countries with little or no experience of expressing dissent through newspapers. Mali is a particularly striking example: News media there are among the least controlled in sub-Saharan Africa.33 The mix of independent media includes many privately owned radio stations, another uncommon feature of contemporary African media systems.34 So traditions of expressing dissent and conflicting opinions through newspapers—while certainly important to the emergence of contemporary independent newspapers—are not altogether or sufficiently explanatory.
Demonstration Effects
The demonstration effect of training programs, features of Africa's media landscape for decades, also may account for the emergence of an ethos of independent journalism in formerly authoritarian African states. While the lasting value of training programs has not been analyzed systematically or in great detail,35 some studies have indicated that training, directly or indirectly, has helped promote values and attitudes consistent with an ethos of independent journalism. W.A.E. Skurnik, for example. has described how journalism faculty and students in the late 1970s at the Ecole Supérieure Internationale de Journalisme in Cameroon expressed skepticism about the then-intense international debate about establishing a New World Information and Communication Order.
The prospective new world information order—a concept much discussed within the United Nations that envisioned measures to adjust a perceived imbalance in the flow of international news to and from developing countries—was seen by Camerooman faculty and students as camouflage for state control of the flow of information.36
Babatunde Jose has also suggested the salience of demonstration effects offered by leading Western newspapers: "Many African journalists look at some newspapers across the Atlantic and flex their muscles and want to act like the American newspapers. . . . But many African journalists try to do this and when they find themselves in the warm embrace of the criminal code, they blame governments for depriving them of freedom to publish all the news."37
Comparison with models overseas is no doubt a crucial factor in developing an ethos of independent journalism,38 much as it is a probable factor in nurturing democratic values in authoritarian political systems. As Bermeo has written, "Political elites have much to learn from the successes and failures of their counterparts abroad. . . . Dictatorial and oppositional elites often look abroad for insights about 'what works and what does not."39 Journalists like-wise have found influential models abroad.
In Côte d'Ivoire, for example, journalists for non-governmental publications speak of French newspapers as representing models for them.40 The Ivorian daily Le Jour evokes the Parisian daily Liberation in its typography and in tone. Moreover, survey data suggested that the French press—which has circulated in Côte d'Ivoire with few restrictions for many years—was widely read and was quite influential among Ivorian university students as long ago as the l970s.41
A Link in the Chain
The independent press in Africa often is regarded by scholars as an end
in itself—as a press that is elitist, urban-bound, and constrained
to serving upscale audiences literate in European languages. Kwame Karikari,
a Ghanaian media analyst, has stated as much: "The independent press
in Africa, even as it struggles to reemerge from the shadows of authoritarianism,
is, by and large, an elite institution. It can be argued that, therefore,
both the state-owned and privately owned independent papers represent
different and sometimes contending sections of the political and economic
elite."42 The elitist characterization, while not uncommon, is more than a little misleading, however. It is certainly more revealing and useful to consider the press in Africa as a link in what John A. Wiseman has described as "a chain of conununication, in which reading is only part of the chain."43 In Africa, the chain of communication is predominantly oral. But written reports can be and are readily absorbed into that chain. The sight of the literate reading newspapers to those who cannot is not uncommon in Africa.44
Kenneth Best, one of West Africa's most persecuted and, hence, most prominent journalists, has recounted how illiterate market women in the Gambia used to buy copies of his newspaper, place them under their wares and at night take them home where their children would read to them.45 In Mali, radio programs that review articles published in the independent press are said to stir "more anguish in politi-cal circles than the original written versions."46 It is, to be sure, important not to overstate the influence of any individual link in Africa's chain of communication.
Radio, for example, has been
characterized as "the most effective means of disseminating information
and ideas in Africa"47 and even as "the central
nervous system of [a] very nervous, decen-tralized continent."48 Indeed, radio broadcasts can reach populations (mainly in rural Africa)
that are often inaccessible to urban-based print media. Private radio
has proved immensely popular in some places, such as Mali, where in the
mid-l990s forty stations competed for audiences.49 The power of radio in Africa, some analysts maintain, was perversely
demonstrated in Rwanda's genocide in 1994, in which perhaps 500,000 ethnic
Tutsis and their Hutu sympathizers were slain. The Paris-based journalists'organization
Reporters sans Frontières concluded that Radio Libre des Mille
Collines, the private radio station of Hutu extremists, "stirred
up ethnic hatred and masterminded massacres" and thus was "partly
responsible for the mass killings."50 But assessments of radio's potential power in Africa should be tempered
or qualified by several factors. The medium in Africa, as elsewhere, is
largely devoted to music and entertainment, rather than to news reporting
and political conunentary.51 The popular French-language
FM station, Africa No. 1, transmits from Gabon a steady programming diet
of African music, game shows, and brief news dispatches, for example.52 Research about African radio audiences and how they process broadcast
reports is spotty, but at least one study, conducted in Kenya, reported
that "only the most highly-educated [listeners] can remember any
substantial portion of the news" broadcast on radio. The finding
prompted the researchers to suggest: "Some of the difficulty in recalling the news may be due to the
form in which the material was presented. It may be that since the news
is written by educated and trained individuals, they prepare newscasts
to satisfy their peer group and themselves," employing complex sentence
structures and polysyllabic words often baffling to less-educated listeners.53
Other research has suggested that radio reports often are regarded with
suspicion,54 a legacy and consequence of the many years
of state control of the airwaves. Moreover, privately owned, local radio stations independent of direct govermnent control have encountered in sub-Saharan Africa impediments not unlike those of print media: limited financial resources, limited advertising, and a limited pool of trained personnel.55 "When they are able to survive," one observer has written, "the stations [often] considerably reduce their staffs and their productions and transform their programming grids into an uninterrupted sequence of musical pieces."56
Competition is intense from international outlets, such as Radio France Internationale, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and the Voice of America, which for years have beamed short-wave programs to Africa. Increasingly, international broadcasters are gaining access to African audiences via FM frequencies. In 1994, for example, the British Broadcasting Corporation launched BBC Afrique FM in Abidjan, to compete with the FM franchises of Radio France Internationale and Africa No. 1.57
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