Author: Emma Sajic
16th February 2001
Africa in the media
Turn on the TV next time the news is on and you might catch an item on Africa. Images of starving children, trucks bringing food aid, run-down hospitals and guerillas with machine-guns fill the screen. A sombre voice-over mentions war, crisis, famine, disease, shortage. Is this all there is to life in an African country?
I decided to investigate this further by searching the Guardian (UK) and the Washington Post (US) for articles about Zambia, a country in South Central Africa formerly colonized by the British (it used to be called Northern Rhodesia then). I also searched for current editions of Zambian newspapers in order to compare them with the UK and US ones. I then interviewed some Zambians living and/or studying in Birmingham to ask them their opinions on the differences between the portrayal of their country in their own newspapers and in UK / US newspapers.
There were 211 articles mentioning Zambia in the Guardian from 1998 to 2001. The great majority of these articles (19%) were about Zambia's debts and their crippling effects. The next biggest topic (14%) was general politics in the region, followed by articles about war (13%). AIDS was the next most frequent topic of discussion (8%). Other topics covered were corruption (6%), positive tourist articles (5%), positive articles about the Africa World Cup football (4%), negative tourist articles (4%), the poor quality and high cost of education in Zambia (3%), racism towards Africans (1%), slavery (1%) and natural disasters (1%). It can be seen from this list that negative articles outnumbered positive articles by a ratio of roughly 11:1.
A search of the Washington Post's articles on Zambia from January to February 2001 revealed four articles mentioning Zambia. They were all about the war in the Congo (Zambia shares a border with Congo). They were from the perspective of US politics, and urged US leaders to avoid U.S. engagement in the Congo war. There were no positive articles.
The Monitor is a recently established Zambian newspaper. It contains a much wider variety of articles about Zambia than those found in the Guardian or the Washington Post. The main sections of the paper are politics, business and sport but the tone of the articles is more optimistic than those in the US and UK papers. One business article dealt with the appreciation of the kwacha (the Zambian currency) and this was seen as positive. This economic upturn was not mentioned in any UK / US articles about the Zambian economy, which see it primarily as burdened by debt. A feature article in The Monitor describes the Livingstone Young People Against Corruption Festival, which was 'a whirlwind of artistic activity in diverse genres: painting, dance, drama, and lots of singing' created by secondary-school pupils to protest against corruption in Zambia. The Zambezi Times, a Zambian newspaper published in New York, has a similar focus on politics and business but also contains a discussion on AIDS which aims to 'focus on the way that the western news media, over the years, has consistently presented the AIDS crisis in Africa with a tone of extreme pessimism [and] examine how the strides that have helped several African countries begin to reverse the effects of the epidemic, present a more optimistic outlook'.
I interviewed four Zambians, two women and two men. They felt that the coverage of Africa in the UK and US showed bad news overall. However, they pointed out that newspapers are more independent here than in Zambia and Zambian papers are more limited in what they are allowed to print. One woman felt that articles were only printed about African countries in UK/US papers if they were countries that attracted UK/US tourism. Living in Zambia was not as negative as UK/US papers made it sound: one man pointed out the beautiful scenery and wildlife in Zambia, the warm weather and the united, community spirited nature of the people. He said that the main negative aspect to the country was a wide gap between rich and poor with poverty being a genuine problem. He also felt that UK/US papers exaggerated war in African countries out of proportion and made it sound like war was everywhere in Africa, when Zambia is a peaceful country with no war, and in countries where there is war it is usually confined to the borders. Daily life continues in the rest of the country.
Anyone who reads the international section of a UK newspaper or listens to
the news on TV or the radio cannot fail to realize that the image which the UK
media portrays of the African continent is usually negative. It is important to
remember that there is a positive side to Africa which sadly is not often shown
in the media here.
Links:
The Monitor website http://afronet.org.za
The Guardian website http://www.guardian.co.uk
The Washington Post website http://www.washingtonpost.com
© Emma Sajic 2001. All rights reserved.