Ebrima,

Thanks for forwarding this interesting piece from Baffour Ankomah.   Baffour indeed is one of the finest and most controversial  African journalist around at present.  I find his iconoclastic approach on reporting on Africa very interesting and inspiring.  His analysis of the bias reporting of Africa by the western media is quite apt. The headline grabbing is unashamedly obvious.  Remember the ECONOMIST cover story called ' HOPELESS CONTINENT'.  I first read him when he wrote that scathing report on Gambia during the Jawara regime : 'STRANGER IN BANJUL'.  Since then i have been hooked to the NEW AFRICAN.  I like his column 'BAFFOUR's BEEFs'. 


I hope the new head of BBC's Africa team of journalist (Raggia Omar-Somali born) will bring a more rigorous and objective approach to covering reports from Africa. 

All the best Ebrima, keep it up.

regards,

Mboge

>From: ebrima ceesay <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Contrasting the African and Western Media
>Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 05:28:35 -0500
>
>Gambia-L:
>
>We had a seminar, a few weeks ago, at Birmingham University,
>focusing on the
>African media. Three papers were discussed. I presented the first
>paper,
>followed by Safiyya Aliyu-Abdullah, a Nigerian journalist, and the
>final
>presentation came from Baffour Ankomah, the Ghanaian born editor in
>chief of
>the well respected London based New African Magazine, who had the
>task to
>contrast the African and the Western media.
>
>Baffour Ankomah's paper, I have to say, was controversial and in
>fact
>provoked intense debate among the audience.
>
>Many in the audience agreed that he had indeed identified the
>problems, as
>it were, vis-a-vis the African and the western media, but debated
>him
>intensely, over some of his conclusions/prescriptions. Anyway, he
>sent me
>his paper yesterday, for our internal publication here, but I
>thought I
>should also forward it to the L, in the hope that some of you might
>find it
>useful.
>
>Enjoy reading the brother's thought-provoking paper, reproduced
>below.
>
>Ebrima Ceesay
>Birmingham, UK
>
>__________________________________________________________________
>
>"Contrasting the African and Western media"
>
>By: Baffour Ankomah,
>Editor, New African magazine, London
>
>To: The seminar by The Graduate Forum, Centre of West African
>Studies,
>Birmingham University.
>
>
>
>It was the UN Secretary General of long time ago, the Burmese, U
>Thant, who
>once asked: "What is the difference between capitalism and
>communism?"
>
>He answered it himself: "Capitalism," he said, "consists of man
>exploiting
>man. With Communism, it is the other way round."
>
>If I could pretend to be a UN Secretary General this evening, (don't
>worry I
>don't have the grey hair to go with it, at least I have a natural
>haircut,
>that would do, isn't it?), I would like to ask those, including
>Lawrence,
>who gave me this difficult subject this evening: "What is the
>difference
>between the Western media and the African media?
>
>Please don't give me the answer yet. We will discuss it over coffee.
>That's
>what consultants do, isn't it?
>
>Talking about the Western media reminds me of one Mr Ian Rae, from
>Northfield, Birmingham. He wrote a letter to The Times on 6 January
>1999,
>saying:
>
>"Sir, For once I got a rather good shirt and tie for Christmas, so I
>tried
>them on and showed my wife.
>
>"The verdict? 'You look different when you are clean'."
>
>Isn't that nice?
>
>He signed off his letter: "Yours dazzlingly. Ian Rae".
>
>To me, The Times has the best Letters Page in the whole of Britain.
>And I
>don't miss it. If I'm unable to read it in the office, I cut the
>page out
>and read it on the train going home. You learn a lot from the views
>of the
>ordinary people who write to The Times.
>
>"You look different when you are clean", Mr Rae's wife told him.
>That's one
>of the major contrasts between the Western media and the African
>media.
>
>The Western media looks different when they are clean. But are they
>always
>clean? We shall see by the end of the night.
>
>For those who may have underestimated the power of the media, let me
>start
>by quoting the African-American writer and Egyptologist, Anthony
>Browder:
>
>"Everything you see," he said recently, "whether it is on a
>billboard, a
>movie, video or commercial, has been designed by a person. So every
>image is
>there for a reason."
>
>Browder was speaking in an interview with The Voice, (of London). To
>him,
>"the media are the most powerful forms of communication ever devised
>by man.
>If you are not conscious of that, then you won't know how to protect
>yourself from negative images projected through the media", he said.
>
>He is not alone. In a recent leader comment on the sale of The
>Express, The
>Guardian, wrote:
>
>"The Daily Express was once a paper whose journalism thundered out
>across
>country and Empire. For more than 15 years, it sold more than four
>million
>copies a day. Its proprietor, Lord Beaverbrook, liked to think of
>his main
>paper as a weapon.
>
>'When skilfully employed,' he wrote, 'no politician of any party can
>resist
>it. It is a flaming sword which will cut through any political
>armour. Many
>newspapers are harmless because they do not know how to strike or
>when to
>strike... But teach the man behind them how to load and what to
>shoot at,
>and they become deadly'."
>
>This is another lesson that the African media have not learned.
>
>"Many newspapers are harmless," Lord Beaverbrook said, "because they
>do not
>know how to strike or when to strike. But teach the man behind them
>how to
>load and what to shoot at, and they become deadly... When skilfully
>employed, no politician of any party can resist it. It is a flaming
>sword
>[that] will cut through any political armour."
>
>To better understand the contrasts between the African media and the
>Western
>media, we must first understand the dynamics and agendas driving
>both sets
>of media.
>
>We may not like it, but the truth is that it is the Western media
>that today
>sets the agenda and tenor of what makes news and how it is reported
>across
>the world (including the slant, the pitch, how it is played and so
>forth).
>
>The African media is sadly caught up in this web, and having been so
>bamboozled, we are reduced to only mimicking the attitude of the
>Western
>media towards Africa and Africans.
>
>In the end, we unwittingly add to the bad reporting of Africa by the
>Western
>media. In the main, we simply follow the lead set by the Western
>media.
>
>Why this is so is partly due to the training we get in Africa and
>elsewhere.
>
>"You are what you know", says one of the catchphrases being used by
>the CNN
>in recent months. To me, nothing can better that. We are what we
>know. All
>of us are!
>
>Throughout our days as student-journalists in Africa, we are made to
>believe
>that there is something called "the free press" in the West. Of
>course all
>the textbooks are by Western writers. And they tell us that this
>"free
>press", in the West is so free that they publish whatever is the
>truth,
>fairly, accurately and without favour.
>
>We are never taught what Lord Beaverbrook teaches his editors and
>journalists at The Express.
>
>That a newspaper (or the media) is a "weapon, a flaming sword" that
>must
>"know how to strike and when to strike". That, for the journalists
>"behind"
>this "flaming sword" to "become deadly", they must know "how to load
>[the
>weapon] and what to shoot at."
>
>This is a very important lesson we never teach in Africa. So we come
>out of
>school pumped full with ideas of this Western "free press", and so,
>we do
>our best to reproduce it in Africa often with catastrophic results.
>
>"Publish and be damned" then becomes a principle to die for. It
>makes us
>feel good if we are seen to "uphold" press freedom by being hostile
>to our
>governments. It makes you a "good journalist" whether what you write
>harms
>national interest or not. In fact, many times we are not even
>conscious that
>we are harming national interest.
>
>
>The free press
>But does the West have a free press? If you believe it, you will
>believe
>that gold grows on trees. Why we believe it in Africa, is proof that
>there
>is some magic in Western textbooks.
>
>Having lived in Britain for 14 years as a practising journalist, I
>can say,
>with my hand on my heart, that there is NOTHING like an unfettered
>"free
>press" anywhere in the world! Not the type we read about in Western
>textbooks.
>
>It doesn't exist in Britain. Neither in America. Nor in France. Nor
>in
>Germany. Nor anywhere! And I challenge anybody who knows, or has
>ever met,
>this "Mr Free Press" to kindly introduce me to him. Because I would
>like to
>have dinner with this "Mr Free Press".
>
>What is true (and you don't get it in any of the textbooks), is that
>the
>"freedom" of the Western media ends where national interest begins.
>
>The Western media is restricted by national laws and the various
>agendas
>that influence their reporting of the news. In effect, the Western
>media is
>not free to report freely.
>
>Britain, perhaps, has the most laws limiting press freedom in the
>whole
>world. The fact that British journalists are not routinely harassed
>by the
>government, is testament to the journalists' religious obedience to
>the
>restrictive laws, and not to any democratic inclinations of the
>British
>state or establishment.
>
>This is something African journalists must learn - and fast.
>
>Generally, the Western media (and particularly the British media)
>are guided
>by what I call "a five-point unwritten code". Which are:
>* National interest
>* Government lead
>* Ideological leaning
>* Advertisers and Readers' power
>
>When it comes to their dealings with Africa, there is one more added
>to make
>it five: Historical baggage.
>
>Besides these "Big Five" points, there are other minor ones that
>inform the
>bad reporting of Africa by the Western media: I will look at two
>here:
>
>(A) Lack of interest, and ignorance about Africa
>(B) The disrespect for Africa, its cultures and institutions.
>
>We have all read articles in the Western media about "half-naked"
>Africans
>walking about in their towns and villages oblivious of their state
>of
>half-nakedness.
>
>What we don't get is the context. Which is that, these "half naked"
>Africans
>live in temperatures so hot that they necessarily have to take some
>of their
>clothes off.
>
>We all know that in summer, when the weather is hot and "the living
>is easy"
>in Europe, it is normal to see some British people walk about in
>town "half
>naked". But we don't see any demeaning articles about them? It is
>even
>considered "fashionable" to expose some flesh in summer. It brings
>delight
>to all, especially the male species.
>
>So then, I ask, what is news about Africans who live all-year round
>in
>temperatures even hotter than the European summer, walking "half
>naked" in
>their villages and trying to get a tan?
>
>To the average Westerner, Africa is just one country where everybody
>knows
>everybody. In fact that is the impression you get from the size of
>Africa on
>an average world map.
>
>Though Africa is said to be the "second largest continent" in the
>world and
>the most variegated, it looks so small on the world map in
>comparison to the
>other continents.
>
>America and Canada together actually look bigger on the world map
>than
>Africa! How this is possible, beats me. Perhaps somebody in this
>audience
>can rescue me on this, how did these cartographers manage to make
>Africa
>look so small on the world map? I look at it, and say no Africa
>possibly
>cannot be the second largest continent in the world?
>
>Whatever the reasons, you can always excuse the ordinary Westerner
>(including George Bush the Son) for his inability to pick his
>Nigerias from
>the Ghanas on the map.
>
>But you can't excuse the Western media for treating Africa the way
>they do,
>because the media is not run by average Westerners. Their treatment
>of
>Africa as a small, unimportant place, deserving to be covered by
>just one
>correspondent, or at best two, is inexcusable.
>
>In the past, these "Africa correspondents" were based in Nairobi,
>Kenya, and
>lately in Johannesburg, South Africa.
>
>But how can one correspondent cover the 53 countries of Africa and
>do the
>job well? Britain is the same size as Ghana, where I come from. Can
>one
>correspondent cover Britain, small as it is, and do the job well?
>
>And if you think that Congo alone is bigger than 12 European
>countries put
>together - yes, I have checked my atlas, Congo is bigger than
>Britain,
>Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, the
>Netherlands,
>the Republic of Ireland, Switzerland and Croatia all put together,
>and you
>still have four million square miles of Congolese territory to give
>away to
>the sons of King Leopold.
>
>And Congo is not even the largest country in Africa, Sudan is!
>
>Imagine what one correspondent can do if he is assigned to cover
>Britain,
>Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Denmark, Belgium,
>Netherlands,
>Ireland, Switzerland and Croatia. And this correspondent is based in
>the
>Irish capital, Dublin, in the far west of Europe. What quality of
>work will
>he or she produce on these 12 countries?
>
>Yet in terms of Africa, these 12 countries translate into just one
>country -
>Congo! Imagine, therefore, the quality of work The Times'
>correspondent is
>producing about the 53 countries of Africa from his base in
>Johannesburg.
>
>
>Now let's talk about the Big Five points, and I will start with
>Historical
>Baggage, because it is the one that distresses me most among the
>five.
>
>On 3 May 1999, George Alagiah, the BBC's former "Africa
>correspondent",
>returning to base in London, after his tour of duty in Africa, wrote
>a
>heart-touching article in The Guardian, which has since become my
>benchmark
>for assessing "historical baggage".
>
>We all know Alagiah to be of Asian origin, but also as a man who
>spent part
>of his childhood in Africa. Let me quote portions of what he wrote:
>
>"For most people who get their view of the world from TV," he began,
>"Africa
>is a faraway place where good people go hungry, bad people run
>government,
>and chaos and anarchy are the norm.
>
>"My job is to give a fuller picture. [But] I have a gnawing regret
>that, as
>a foreign correspondent, I have done Africa a disservice, too often
>showing
>the continent at its worst and too rarely showing it in full flower.
>
>"There is an awful lot of historical baggage to cut through when
>reporting
>Africa: the 20th century view of the continent is, even now,
>infected with
>the prevailing wisdom of the 19th century.
>
>"Take this description of an African from a speech given by the
>explorer
>John Hanning Speke in the 1860s:
>
>'As his father did, so does he. He works his wife, sells his
>children,
>enslaves all he can lay his hands upon and unless fighting for the
>lands of
>others, contents himself with drinking, singing, and dancing like a
>baboon,
>to drive dull care away.'
>
>"It's an ugly thought but I would bet one of my new suits that there
>are
>many out there for whom these words still have resonance...
>
>"I take this personally because I spent part of my childhood in
>Africa.
>After Britain, Africa is probably the place I feel most at home. I
>know it
>to be a place of great passion and variety. Above all, it is a place
>where
>the outsider is forever welcome. In the hardest of times and in the
>most
>desolate of places, I have been greeted with a warm hand and an open
>heart.
>
>"I had reason to remember this when reporting from Albania recently.
>I am no
>expert on European affairs, and it came as a shock that there was
>somewhere
>as poor as Albania in [Europe].
>
>"But what I found more surprising and disturbing [in Albania] was
>the lack
>of joie de vivre. Whereas even in the most poverty-stricken and
>politically
>oppressed corner of Africa, there is an irrepressible vein of hope
>and
>humour that bubbles to the surface.
>
>"Perhaps this is what Ben Okri had in mind in his poem, An African
>Elegy:
>
>'We are the miracles that God made/To taste the bitter fruit of
>time/We are
>precious/And one day our suffering/Will turn into the wonders of the
>earth'.
>
>"It is a noble sentiment but not one you will easily glean from my
>reporting
>[of Africa]. There has been too much of Africans as victims and not
>enough
>showing their daily triumphs against impossible odds..."
>
>
>Anybody who knows Africa will agree with every sentiment in
>Alagiah's
>article. Yet The Guardian, in its infinite mercy, chose to headline
>Alagiah's article: "New light on the Dark Continent".
>
>There you have it! Alagiah is pleading that the Western media should
>drop
>the "historical baggage" nonsense. And yet The Guardian insists on
>calling
>Africa "the Dark Continent" in the very headline of the very article
>in
>which Alagiah is asking for the very "Dark Continent" nonsense to be
>dropped!
>
>So where did this "historical baggage" come from? Simple, it comes
>from
>history. My good friend, Milton Allimadi, a Ugandan who edits his
>own paper
>in New York, has traced it all the way to the 5th century when
>Herodotus
>wrote The Histories.
>
>"Europeans in those days," says Allimadi, "regarded the African
>continent as
>backward and inhabited by at worst savages and at best unintelligent
>and
>cruel people."
>
>Never mind the great empires our ancestors built. Never mind that
>when the
>African ancestors were building great pyramids, the ancestors of the
>Greeks
>did not know what a window was.
>
>Anyway, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the journals of the European
>travellers became the main medium of disseminating this
>stereotypical image
>of Africa.
>
>As Allimadi has shown in his major series starting in New African
>next
>month: "In the early part of the 20th century, negative
>characterisations of
>Africa were pervasive in American publications such as The New York
>Times,
>National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker and many
>European
>newspapers and magazines."
>
>In 1959, when The New York Times sent Homer William Bigart (a
>Pulitzer Prize
>winner) to cover events in West Africa at the start of the
>independence era,
>he left New York with "historical baggage" coming out of his ears.
>Bigart
>was soon writing back to his foreign news editor, Emmanuel Freedman,
>after
>visiting Ghana and Nigeria, in these words:
>
>"I'm afraid I cannot work up any enthusiasm for the emerging
>republics. The
>politicians are either crooks or mystics. Dr Nkrumah [who was then
>the
>president of Ghana] is a Henry Wallace in burnt cork. I vastly
>prefer the
>primitive bush people. After all, cannibalism may be the logical
>antidote to
>this population explosion everyone talks about."
>
>When The New York Times foreign news editor, Freedman, received
>those
>reports, he was so thrilled that he sent this note back to Bigart:
>
>"This is just a note to say hello and to tell you how much your
>peerless
>prose from the badlands is continuing to give us and your public. By
>now you
>must be American journalism's leading expert on sorcery, witchcraft,
>cannibalism and all the other exotic phenomena indigenous to darkest
>Africa.
>All this and nationalism too! Where else but in The New York Times
>can you
>get all this for a nickel?"
>
>Where else, indeed!
>
>But wait for this one from Bigart in 1960, written four weeks before
>Congo's
>independence. He complained to Freedman in a letter from Kinshasa
>(then
>Leopoldville), thus:
>
>"I had hoped to find pygmies voting and interview them on the
>meaning of
>independence but they were all in the woods. I did see several
>lions,
>however, and from Usumbura I sent a long mailer about the Watutsi
>giants."
>
>Poor bigot (sorry Bigart). Having failed to see any pgymies voting,
>he chose
>to dig deep into his suitcase full of "historical baggage" and came
>out with
>even a winner that thrilled the folks at The New York Times. It was
>printed
>on 5 June 1960 under the headline "Magic of Freedom Enchants
>Congolese".
>
>Bigart wrote from Leopoldville:
>
>"As the hour of freedom from Belgian rule nears, 'in-de-pen-dence'
>is being
>chanted by Congolese all over this immense land, even by pgymies in
>the
>forest. Independence is an abstraction not easily grasped by the
>Congolese
>and they are seeking concrete interpretations. To the forest pygmy,
>independence means a little more salt, a little more beer."
>
>Foreign news editor Freedman loved it! It was him who four years
>earlier, on
>25 July 1956, had written to the then New York Times Africa
>correspondent,
>Leonard Ingalls, in these famous words:
>
>"We read that in Black Africa, where the principle of the wheel was
>scarcely
>known a generation or two ago, there is now a great demand for
>bicycles, a
>trend is underway toward two-bicycle families. Is there a light
>economic
>air-mail feature in the increasing mobility of the aborigines?
>
>"Where do they buy their bikes? What do they cost? How long does it
>take a
>man to earn enough money to buy one? Is his status advanced? Does he
>have
>roads or bicycle tracks, or does he ride through the bush? What is
>the usual
>biking costume - robe, breach-cloth, animal skin or birthday suit?
>How is
>the bicycle business? Are dealers getting rich? Are there bicycle
>garages in
>the bush? What social effects is the bicycle having?"
>
>Historical baggage. It's pure madness!
>
>But nothing has changed since the days of Freedman and Bigart. It
>still
>rules Western newsrooms. After the recent assassination of President
>Kabila
>in Congo, British newspapers could find no appropriate headline than
>rush
>back to the tired, old one: "In the heart of darkness".
>
>Alex Duval Smith, a woman (and women usually know better) wrote from
>her
>African base in Johannesburg for The Independent, the day after
>Kabila's
>assassination. And please listen to this:
>
>"The heart of darkness was never darker. President Laurent Kabila,
>the
>latest in an uninterrupted line of pillagers of a territory the size
>of
>Western Europe is dead. Now the vultures are massing for the next
>round of
>Africa's First World War."
>
>But what has "darkness" got to do with assassinating a president?
>
>If Alex Duval Smith were similarly reporting about the assassination
>of
>President J.F. Kennedy in Dallas (and more than one Kennedy has been
>assassinated by the Americans), she would never had dared to
>describe it in
>those "dark" tones.
>
>Yet when it comes to assassinations, the Americans lead the
>Congolese by a
>good mile. From the Kennedys to the Martin Luther Kings and the
>Malcolm Xs!
>But nobody describes America as "a dark" place.
>
>In effect, this is what you get when "historical baggage" rules your
>head as
>a journalist.
>
>
>Now let's go to National Interest:
>
>By far, national interest is the most important factor that drives
>the
>Western media and determines whether a story is printed or spiked,
>whether
>it is on the front page or buried inside.
>
>African journalism schools tend to put too much emphasis on fair and
>impartial reporting, and nothing on national interest. I don't
>remember
>myself ever being told by my journalism teachers in Ghana, about
>national
>interest. We don't have it, do we? It is simply not in the
>curriculum. But
>my 14 years in Britain have taught me that we ignore the importance
>of
>national interest in news coverage at our peril.
>
>As Ronald Spark, former chief lead writer of The Sun put it in 1991:
>"Truth
>is sacred, but a newspaper that tells only part of the truth is a
>million
>times preferable to one that tells the truth to harm his country."
>
>Strangely, you don't get Mr Spark's remarkable insight in any
>textbook.
>Hence, African journalists are full of the idea that was so
>succinctly put
>last year by Kofi Coomson, editor of The Ghanaian Chronicle in
>Accra.
>
>"The true professional journalist anywhere in the world," he told a
>media
>conference, "will tell you that the relationship between government
>and the
>press should of necessity be adversarial."
>
>I say, if that is true, then "the true professional" Western
>journalist has
>not yet been born. Because the relationship between, for example,
>the
>British media and the government is not, and has never been,
>adversarial
>throughout the centuries.
>
>Rather, there is a thick layer of complementarity between them. The
>one
>supports the other. In fact, they feed on each other for the
>betterment of
>the British nation as a whole.
>
>And the thread that binds them is national interest. Any story that
>risks
>harming the interests of Britain is treated with utmost care, and
>this care
>includes the dustbin. Conversely, any story that enhances Britain's
>national
>interest is given a big play. "Adversarial relationship" does not
>come in at
>all.
>
>This actually fits so well with the "Wolf's Law of Journalism",
>which says:
>"You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God, the British
>journalist. But,
>seeing what the man will do unbribed, there is no occasion to."
>
>In fact, it is not only the British journalist who is guilty of this
>crime,
>his American counterpart is equally as bad. Let me quote you some
>portions
>of Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks book, The CIA And The Cult of
>Intelligence. They wrote:
>
>"In a recent interview, a nationally syndicated columnist with close
>ties to
>the CIA was asked how he would have reacted in 1961 if he had
>uncovered
>advance information that the Agency was going to launch the Bay of
>Pigs
>invasion of Cuba.
>
>"He replied somewhat wistfully, 'The trouble with the Establishment
>is that
>I would have gone to one of my friends in the government, and he
>would have
>told me why I shouldn't write the story. And I probably wouldn't
>have
>written the story'."
>
>Marchetti and Marks commented: "It was rather fitting that this
>columnist,
>when queried about exposing a CIA operation, should have put his
>answer in
>terms of the 'Establishment' (of which he is a recognised member)
>since much
>of what the American people have learned - or have not learned -
>about the
>Agency has been filtered through an 'old-boy network' of journalists
>friendly to the CIA."
>
>"With the pronounced Anglophile bias and envy of Britain's Official
>Secrets
>Act so common among high CIA officials, Robert Amory, former deputy
>director
>of Intelligence, compared the situation to our 'free motherland in
>England'
>where if a similar situation comes up, 'everybody shushes up in the
>interest
>of national security and...what they think is the interest of the
>free world
>civilisation."
>
>The American media, like their Western counterparts, often allow
>intelligence agents to write under false names when it suits their
>national
>interests.
>
>"The identities of these 'reporters' are closely guarded secrets,"
>say
>Marchetti and Marks. "According to Oswald Johnston's Washington
>Star-News
>report (confirmed by other papers), in 1973 there were still about
>40
>full-time reporters and freelancers on the CIA payroll.
>
>
>"In 1960 when the Soviet Union shot down the American U-2 spy plane
>over
>Russia, Chalmers Roberts, long the Washington Post's diplomatic
>correspondent, confirms in his book, 'First Rough Draft', that he
>and 'some
>other newsmen' knew about the U-2 flights in the late 1950s and
>'remained
>silent'.
>
>"Roberts explains: 'Retrospectively, it seems a close question as to
>whether
>this was the right decision, but I think it probably was. We took
>the
>position that the NATIONAL INTEREST came before the story because we
>knew
>the United States very much needed to discover the secrets of Soviet
>missilery'."
>
>Marchetti and Marks continued: "As the date for the [Bay of Pigs]
>invasion
>[of Cuba in 1961] approached, the New Republic obtained a
>comprehensive
>account of the preparations for the operation, but the liberal
>magazine's
>editor-in-chief, Gilbert Harrison, became wary of the security
>implications
>and submitted the article to President Kennedy for his advice.
>Kennedy asked
>that it not be printed, and Harrison, a friend of the President,
>complied.
>
>"At about the same time, The New York Times reporter Tad Szulc
>uncovered
>nearly the complete story, and the [paper] made preparations to
>carry it on
>7 April 1961, under a four-column headline. But [the paper's]
>publisher,
>Orvil Dryfoos, and Washington bureau chief, James Reston, both
>objected to
>the article on NATIONAL-SECURITY grounds, and it was edited to
>eliminate all
>mention of CIA involvement or an 'imminent' invasion.
>
>"The truncated story, which mentioned only that 5,000 to 6,000
>Cubans were
>being trained in the United States and Central America 'for the
>liberation
>of Cuba', no longer merited a banner headline and was reduced to a
>single
>column on the front page.
>
>"The New York Times editor, Clifton Daniel, later explained that
>Dryfoos had
>ordered the story toned down 'above all [out of] concern for the
>safety of
>the men who were preparing to offer their lives on the beaches of
>Cuba'.
>
>"Yet, less than a month after the invasion, at a meeting where he
>was urging
>newspaper editors not to print security information, President
>Kennedy was
>able to say to The New York Times' man, Catledge: 'If you had
>printed more
>about the [Bay of Pigs] operation, you would have saved us from a
>colossal
>mistake'.
>
>"The failure of the Bay of Pigs cost CIA Director Dulles his job,
>and he was
>succeeded in November 1961 by John McCone... In McCone's first weeks
>at the
>Agency, The New York Times got wind of the fact that the CIA was
>training
>Tibetans in paramilitary techniques at an agency base in Colorado,
>but,
>according to David Wise's account in 'The Politics of Lying', the
>Office of
>the Secretary of Defence 'pleaded' with The New York Times to kill
>the
>story, which it did.
>
>"From the days of Allen Dulles, Time magazine had always had close
>relations
>with the CIA. In more recent years, the magazine's chief Washington
>correspondent, Hugh Sidey, relates: "With McCone and Helms, we had a
>set-up
>that when the magazine was doing something on the CIA, we went to
>them and
>put it before them... We were never misled'.
>
>"Similarly, when Newsweek decided in the winter of 1971 to do a
>cover story
>on Richard Helms and 'The New Espionage', the magazine, according to
>a
>Newsweek staffer, went directly to the CIA for much of its
>information. And
>the article, published on 22 November 1971, generally reflected the
>line
>that Helms was trying so hard to sell...
>
>"The CIA is perfectly ready to reward its friends. Besides provision
>of big
>news breaks such as defector stories, selected reporters may receive
>'exclusives' on everything from US government foreign policy to
>Soviet
>intentions.
>
>"Hal Hendrix, described by three different Washington reporters as a
>known
>'friend' of the [CIA], won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1962 Miami Daily
>News
>reporting of the Cuban missile crisis. Much of this 'inside story'
>was truly
>inside: it was based on CIA leaks."
>
>Some may say, but Marchetti and Marks were writing in 1974, it's
>pretty old
>stuff. I can tell them that nothing has changed in American
>newsrooms.
>
>During the Kosovo War last year, it was reported by The Guardian
>that CNN
>allowed two CIA men to come and work with them in Atlanta and "look
>after
>the news".
>
>Only last Monday, 19 February, 10 days ago to be precise, William
>Rees-Mogg,
>writing in The Times under the headline, "When Uncle Sam was a drugs
>runner,
>provided a damning example of how national interest still rule
>American
>journalism.
>
>He told of how "the biggest scandal in modern American history" -
>the Meana
>Airport Scandal in Arkansas - was ignored by the big newspapers and
>TV
>networks of America on grounds of national interest, while Monica
>Lewinsky
>was trumpeted as the ultimate scandal to hit America.
>
>The Meana scandal involved "the wholesale route of cocaine
>importation into
>the US in the 1980s", Rees-Mogg wrote. "The cocaine was turned into
>crack;
>the crack epidemic ravaged the black districts of the big American
>cities as
>badly as Aids ravaged the homosexual communities in the same
>period."
>
>At the time, William Jefferson Clinton was the governor of Arkansas.
>Somehow
>his state government allowed (or just played blind to) planes loaded
>with
>guns from Meana Airport flying to South America, and returning with
>drugs
>that found their way into the black neighbourhoods of America, all
>under the
>watchful eyes of agents of the US Drug Enforcement Agency."
>
>The operation, according to Rees-Mogg, was spearheaded by one Barry
>Seal who
>"flew the weapons in violation of US foreign policy and, in return,
>the US
>federal government secretly allowed Seal to smuggle drugs back into
>the
>US... Seal was [later] murdered by Colombian gunmen while in US
>federal
>custody."
>
>When the Arkansas Congressman, Bill Alexander ("at the time the
>Democratic
>whip in Congress in Washington DC, and the senior Democrat of the
>House
>Appropriations Committee") tried to investigate the Meana Scandal,
>"his
>inquiry was sidetracked both in Arkansas and in Washington".
>
>After Seal's murder, his friend Jerry Parks, a private detective in
>Little
>Rock, Arkansas, became Governor Clinton's security chief in Little
>Rock,
>during the 1992 presidential election campaign.
>
>Later, Parks confessed that "Vince Voster - Bill Clinton's lawyer -
>paid him
>$1,000 in cash for each [drugs] trip".
>
>In 1993, Parks was murdered by two still unidentified gunmen. Later
>Vince
>Voster himself was found dead in a park in Virginia.
>
>Though there is no evidence that directly implicates Bill Clinton in
>the
>affair, "he did not respond," as Rees-Mogg says, "to the concerns
>that were
>expressed to him, by Congressman Alexander and others. He allowed a
>catastrophic event to happen."
>
>Yet nobody in America wants to talk about Meana. "The Republican
>silence is
>explained by the fact that Meana was connected to the Iran Contra
>Affair",
>says Ress-Mogg.
>
>The big question is: What did the "free press" of America do with
>the Meana
>story. Remember, national interest was at stake. The US federal
>government
>was at risk of being exposed as having deliberately imported drugs
>to
>destroy the African-American community. The political fallout was
>potentially explosive.
>
>So, although some little newspapers ran bits of the story in April
>1988,
>September 1991, and April 1992, America's finest and heavyweight
>papers,
>magazines and TV networks such as The New York Times, The Washington
>Post,
>Time magazine, Newsweek, CBS ABC and CNN, simply refused to
>investigate the
>story further for publication.
>
>Rees-Mogg says: "It is the US press which should most blame itself.
>Where
>were The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, or the
>main
>television networks of that period? Virtually silent."
>
>Rees-Mogg finished off his article by saying: "In 1994, I remember
>reading a
>thorough Meana investigation by two American journalists prepared
>for The
>Washington Post; that was never published... In the years, when
>Clinton was
>still a candidate, Meana was not included by The New York Times
>among 'All
>the News That's Fit to Print'."
>
>Does the same thing happen in Britain? You bet!
>
>In June last year, David Leigh, writing in that month's issue of the
>British
>Journalism Review, provided valuable insight into how British
>journalism is
>still manipulated by the intelligence agencies.
>
>He wrote: "The manipulation takes three forms. The first is the
>attempt to
>recruit journalists to spy on other people, or to go themselves
>under
>journalistic 'cover'. This occurs today and it has gone on for
>years. It is
>dangerous, not only for the journalist concerned, but also for other
>journalists who get tarred with the espionage brush...
>
>"The second form of manipulation that worries me is when
>intelligence
>officers are allowed to pose as journalists in order to write
>tendentious
>articles under false names. Evidence of this only rarely comes to
>light, but
>two examples have surfaced recently...
>
>"The third sort of manipulation is the most insidious - when
>intelligence
>agency propaganda stories are planted on willing journalists, who
>disguise
>their origin from readers.
>
>"There is - or has been until recently - a very active programme by
>the
>secret agencies to colour what appears in the British press, called,
>if
>publications by various defectors can be believed, 'Information
>Operations'
>or 'I/Ops'. I am - unusually - in a position to provide some
>information
>about these operations."
>
>Leigh went on to show that "false information where the source is
>disguised"
>by the press has been a tool of British intelligence since World War
>II. He
>gave examples of stories planted by the intelligence agencies in
>various
>British papers, including The News of the World, The Observer, The
>Sunday
>Telegraph and The Spectator in which the "sources were members of
>the MI6".
>
>Leigh continued. "In August 1997, the present foreign editor of The
>Independent was also in contact with the MI6 while he was at his
>previous
>post at The Observer. I know, because I became involved in an
>MI6-inspired
>story as a result...
>
>Leigh goes on to show how they "were supplied with a mass of
>apparently
>high-quality intelligence from MI6, including surveillance details
>of a
>meeting in an Istanbul hotel between a pizza merchant [who lived in
>Glasgow]
>and men involved in Iranian nuclear procurement.
>
>"I should make clear," he said, "that we did not publish merely on
>the
>say-so of MI6. We travelled to Glasgow, confronted the pizza
>merchant, and
>only when he admitted that he had been dealing with representatives
>of the
>nuclear industry in Iran did we publish the article. In the story we
>made it
>plain that our target had been watched by Western intelligence.
>
>"Nevertheless, I felt uneasy, and vowed never to take part in such
>an
>exercise again.
>
>Leigh now believes that the British media "ought to come clean about
>these
>approaches, and devise some ethics to deal with them. In our vanity,
>we
>imagine that we control these sources. But the truth is that they
>are
>deliberately seeking to control us."
>
>Now, what does all this amount to? Very simple. It shows that when
>it comes
>to national interest, the so-called "free press" of the West is
>prepared to
>throw every journalistic principle out the window and work with the
>government and its agents for the general good of their countries.
>In
>African journalism, this vital ingredient is sadly missing.
>
>
>Government lead
>Contrary to the "fiercely independent" image of the Western media,
>they
>often follow the lead set by their home governments.
>
>For example, if the British or American government targets a
>particular
>country or its leader, and bestows good or bad accolades on it or
>him, the
>Western media obediently follow the lead set by the governments,
>irrespective of the facts on the ground.
>
>A good example is Saddam Hussein and Iraq. In the 1980s, when it
>served
>Western interests to use Saddam as a check on Ayatollah Khomeni's
>Iran,
>Saddam was a "good guy" beloved by the West. Britain, America and
>their
>Western allies supplied Saddam's every military need. From the pages
>and TV
>screens of the Western media, dripped fawning articles about Saddam
>the good
>guy.
>
>After the Iran-Iraqi War, when the West had no more need of Saddam,
>the same
>Western governments pronounced him a bad guy. And like sheep, the
>media
>followed the lead set by their governments. Today, the evidence is
>there for
>all to see.
>
>The same thing happens in Africa. During the 1960s, pan-African
>leaders such
>as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Lumumba of Congo, Sekou Toure of Guinea
>and
>others were pronounced bad guys by Western governments, and the
>media
>dutifully followed the lead set by the governments.
>
>Today, Presidents Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Charles Taylor of Liberia
>have
>become Africa's top-shelf "bad guys" merely on the say-so of the US
>and
>British governments. As expected, the Western media are slavishly
>following
>the lead set by the governments and is reporting Mugabe and Taylor
>in the
>most negative terms.
>
>In contrast, the media's current treatment of Presidents Museveni of
>Uganda
>and Paul Kagame of Rwanda as "new breed African leaders" is also a
>reflection of the lead set by the Western governments.
>
>Two days after President Kabila's recent assassination, The
>Independent
>reported that Rwanda "is secretly funded by the CIA", and as a
>result,
>Rwanda "has military operations [in the Congo] far above its means.
>[It] has
>10,000 troops in [the Congo]."
>
>What the paper refused to add is that America has a military base in
>the
>Bugesera district of Rwanda ostensibly to train the Rwandan army.
>But why is
>America still training an army that has 10,000 troops fighting in a
>neighbouring country?
>
>In August last year, the African-American Congresswoman for Georgia,
>Cynthia
>Mckinney, attacked the American dirty tricks in Congo, in an
>interview first
>printed by the East African based in Kenya, and later reproduced by
>New
>African:
>
>The Congresswoman said: "It is unfortunate that US policy in Africa
>has been
>such an abysmal failure. It is true that Bill Clinton is the most
>friendly
>US president to Africa in several generations, but how can someone
>so
>friendly end up with such an outrageous, atrocious, horrible policy
>that
>assists perpetrators of crimes against humanity, inflicting damages
>on
>innocent African peoples? The whole world knows that Uganda and
>Rwanda are
>allies of the United States and that they have been given a carte
>blanche
>for whatever reason to wreck havoc in the Congo."
>
>Western NGOs have recently estimated that about 1.7 million
>Congolese have
>been killed in the past three years. But to the Western media, that
>does not
>pass for news so long as the killing is being done by the "good
>guys"
>supported by America and its Western allies.
>
>
>Ideological leaning
>Ideological leaning is another interesting aspect of the media that
>we never
>teach in Africa.
>
>In Britain, the media is split into two ideological halves - "The
>Tory
>Press" and the "The Leftwing (or Labour) Press". I won't bore you
>with the
>details because you already know how on domestic issues, the Tory
>Press
>support the Conservative party and right wing views, and the
>Leftwing Press
>support the Labour Party and leftwing views.
>
>Yet when it comes to international issues that affect the British
>national
>interests, or Western interests, both The Tory Press and The Labour
>Press
>stick up like glue and sing from the same hymn book. Ideological
>differences
>go out the window, and a united front is erected to "bat for
>Britain" or the
>West.
>
>This explains why there is a broad, hyper-negative tone across the
>British
>(and the Western) media in the reporting of President Mugabe and the
>Zimbabwe land issue.
>
>The Laws
>In African journalism, we pay little attention to the laws of our
>land. Our
>laws were, in the main, inherited from the colonial masters, but
>while the
>British media religiously obey the laws limiting press freedom in
>Britain,
>African journalists don't give a bother. In fact we are not
>consciously made
>aware of any law, apart from the laws of libel.
>
>Britain, at least, has five Official Secrets Acts in force - the
>1889 Act,
>the 1911 Act, the 1920 Act, the 1939 Act and the 1989 Act.
>
>The 1889 Act was replaced by the 1911 Act, which was supplemented by
>the
>1920, 1939 and 1989 Acts.
>
>The most interesting thing here is that the 1911 Act which is the
>central
>law governing this field today was passed into law in a mere 30
>minutes
>because "national interest" was at stake.
>
>The MI5 (then called MO5), which was only two years old at the time,
>played
>a huge rule in the drafting and passing of the Act.
>
>A year later, in 1912, the Act was supplemented by the introduction
>of the
>Admiralty, War Office and Press Committee to ostensibly "advise" the
>press
>on sensitive matters of state.
>
>This committee is now known as the Services, Press and Broadcasting
>Committee, or, more popularly, the "D-Notice Committee".
>
>It is made up of senior civil servants, government officials and
>media
>executives, including editors.
>
>It is supposed to be "a voluntary system of self-censorship whereby
>editors
>agree not to publish information about subjects relating to defence
>and the
>activities of the security and intelligence agencies". But in
>reality,
>editors break the D-Notice rules at their peril.
>
>From time to time, the D-Notice Committee issues notices to editors
>of all
>national, regional and local media "requesting" them not to publish
>this or
>that, in the "interest of national security".
>
>As a result, it was not until fairly recently (in the late 1990s)
>that the
>British media was able to publish such a mundane thing as the
>photograph and
>name of the head of MI5, or photographs of their buildings in
>Theobalds Road
>in Holborn, central London. Yet British journalists go round giving
>lectures
>about the free press in Britain.
>
>Today, the regime is a lot more relaxed in Britain because the
>authorities
>cannot help as the advent of new technology has made it impossible
>to keep a
>tight lid on "secret Britain".
>
>Until 1992, there were about 50 secret sites in Britain (a good
>number of
>them American military bases and listening posts) were covered by
>"D-Notices" and no British editor could publish anything about them.
>Yet
>they had a free press.
>
>Section One of the 1911 Official Secrets Act opens with the pointed
>statement: "If any person for any purpose prejudicial to the safety
>or
>interests of the state..." In 1964, the House of Lords ruled that
>"the
>national interests of the state" were "defined by the government of
>the day
>and not the courts."
>
>Under the Act, "official information" is defined as "anything which
>relates
>to or is used in a prohibited place" or "which is entrusted to a
>state
>employee".
>
>Sir Martin Furnival-Jones, when head of MI5 told the Franks
>Committee set up
>by parliament, that: "It is an official secret if it is in an
>official
>file."
>
>Section 3 of the 1911 Act defines a "prohibited place" as "every
>building
>which the state chooses to define as such."
>
>In addition to the Official Secrets Acts, Britain and all its
>Western allies
>have the Public Records Act which ensures that public records are
>kept
>closed or classified for 30, 40 or 100 years at the discretion of
>the
>government.
>
>The question arising here is: Why does Britain need all these laws?
>The
>answer is simple: The state, like you and I, needs to keep some
>secrets to
>survive. You just cannot wash all your dirty linen in public. And
>the laws
>help in achieving this goal for the general good.
>
>African journalists will have to learn this lesson fast.
>
>In Britain, there is even the Treason Felony Act of 1848 that
>decrees that
>anyone imagining or publishing anything which might lead to the
>downfall of
>the monarch should be deported for life.
>
>Western countries take themselves seriously, and their journalists
>take
>their countries seriously. African governments and journalists sadly
>do not
>take our countries seriously.
>
>In conclusion, while the Western media routinely bend the knee to
>the laws
>limiting press freedom in their respective countries, African
>journalists
>mimic the Western media in all aspects except protecting national
>interest,
>and the patriotism that makes British journalists "bat for Britain"
>or the
>West.
>
>To think that we can have an unfettered "free press" in Africa, when
>it
>doesn't exist anywhere in the world, is a bad mistake we should
>redress
>quickly.
>
>For years, African journalists ourselves have added to the bad
>reporting of
>Africa by just repeating what the Western media puts out about our
>continent
>and people.
>
>We use the same words, the same style and print the same doom and
>gloom
>stories! In fact, we think that once it is on the BBC or in Newsweek
>or The
>Economist, it must have come from the Son of God himself.
>
>As Mr Alpha Lebbie, a Gambian freelance journalist, wrote in
>criticising my
>last July article on Reporting Africa: "And frankly," he wrote,
>"every
>journalist needs to know that it is bad news that sells, in as far
>as news
>connotes the bad and ugly." I nearly wrote back to him saying, Mr
>Lebbie,
>that's why you will ever remain a freelance journalist.
>
>To redress the imbalance, it is desperately important (I can't
>emphasise it
>enough) that African journalists know what our national interests
>are and
>learn to protect them.
>
>If it is good for Britain and other Western countries to have a maze
>of laws
>to keep the media in check, it is equally good for Africa to do the
>same.
>There is no shame in borrowing good ideas. It has worked for them,
>it will
>work for us too.
>
>At the moment, there are no clear cut laws in many African countries
>about
>where press freedom ends and national interest begins.
>
>There are no D-Notice rules, there are no 30-year rule about
>classified
>information (if it is there at all, we don't obey it). In short, we
>have
>this big grey area where anything goes.
>
>Last June, at the height of the Zimbabwe election crisis, a
>Harare-based
>newspaper, the Independent, ran a story about the Mugabe government
>having
>placed a "$72m order for military hardware with China."
>
>This gave The Times (of London) the misplaced satisfaction of
>writing a
>leader comment on 3 June lambasting Mugabe on the basis of the
>revelations
>in the Zimbabwe Independent.
>
>Said The Times: "The privately owned weekly said China North
>Industries
>Corporation, based in Beijing, had been asked to supply hand
>grenades, rifle
>grenades, shoulder-fired rockets and tank ammunition.
>
>"The newspaper said that a 5% down payment had been made in early
>April. It
>quoted from correspondence in its possession which gave the numbers
>of the
>Chinese arms manufacturer's bank account, telegraphic transfer
>orders and
>import licences."
>
>The strange thing is that The Times itself, despite all the press
>freedom
>they claim to have in Britain, could not have printed the same story
>about
>British military imports without first clearing it with the D-Notice
>Committee. And the Committee would have certainly turned The Times
>down
>because the story would have been covered by D-Notice.
>
>Yet in Zimbabwe, such an important national security issue like
>military
>imports is fair game. The newspaper did not even stop to think for a
>moment
>about national security. And The Times of London that should know
>better,
>applauded that crime against the state and people of Zimbabwe
>committed by
>the newspaper.
>
>Need I say more?
>
>
>_________________________________________________________________
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