And Africa: The Quest for Balanced Reporting

By

Salisu Ahmed Koki

Sakoki23@yahoo.co.uk

Journalists and their likes wherever in the world are hailed for the enormous role they played in championing and sustaining good and matured democracy, nation building and the protection of human rights and human dignity worldwide through their interminable and often penetrative campaigns of pointing out the dangers posed by dictatorial rulers whose main pleasure is derived from depriving the masses of their legitimate rights to live a peaceful and well-enjoyed way of life.

This understandably reflects on the journalism profession, but to our utter dismay, today, journalism has taken a new and peculiar dimension and a horrendous definition in the Western World or in the so-called much advertised Free and Civilized world.

Regrettably enough, the once valued and highly regarded Western Media have disgracefully slipped a bit from its renowned tradition of fair and balanced reporting most especially when it comes to reporting issues pertaining Africa and Africans. It is a living reality that nobody except a fool can underestimate the strength of the mass media, be it print, electronic and otherwise to peoples, communities, societies, races, countries and continents. But, how are we going to separate facts from sentiments as regards our adopted culture of incessant listening to news in radios, viewing them on televisions and also reading it in the print media.

In reality, newspapers, magazines, TV, Radio, Pamphlets et cetera gives info to the public, sometimes they give facts, and sometimes the facts are presented in a seemingly biased way. If not for bias or for a grand-propaganda campaign aimed at suppressing, black-listing and condemning a particular continent, its peoples and tribes the issue of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe’s stance on the much controversial land reform and the West’s boisterous response couldn’t have been reported in such a manner that it is reported today in the Western Media. Every now and then the issue of Mugabe and the white settlers remains bread on toast, while the issue of the calculated racism in disguise in Europe has bogged down and hardly one read a critique on the Europe-born fee-status imposed on international students mostly Africans by European Universities, despite their knowledge of an African student’s financial history. In my on view, Africans are better off in the war-ruined Africa than in the inhospitable West.

This single act of fixing a fee-status to be colleted from an African student and the heavy taxes collected from African immigrants in the UK and the rest of Europe while in reality back here in Africa, Western manipulation and exploitation machines the likes of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have marshaled the evil schemes of devaluating the local currency and destabilizing the African economies renders the atmosphere unpropitious for him or her to pursue his or her academic endeavors.

Africans were reduced to doing menial and very degrading low-level jobs in Europe and the rest of Western World. They are constantly harassed and embarrassed by the immigration officers and nothing is done. They were on several occasions stoned and maimed by their hosts and they always stand the probability of being hit or smashed by a spit from the inhospitable Westerners. In Africa , white settlers are enjoying the highest degree of immunity and they live in peace and enjoying every bit of their lives without a threat of being harassed or embarrassed by the host Black African communities.

This so-called civilized and professionalized Western Media failed to point out or even criticize or publicize the illegitimate ownership of Black African lands by the minority White population despite the fact that for over a century, since the slave-trade era Africans have been deprived of utilizing their lands for the betterment of their families and they are piteously punished in return by an unceasing tapping of their resources and the total subjugation to slavery and back-breaking labor in their hijacked lands. Isn’t this racism in disguise? Why should the West panic when President Mugabe resorted to giving his best to his people, thus, making them comfortable with their own resources?

With this kind of a situation on ground, Mr. Mugabe’s defiance is no doubt to the betterment of the deprived and oppressed Black population. The whole Wild-Wild West have to think inwards, because it goes with the wise saying that says “Do not do to others what you do not want done to your self”. If the leaderships in the West think they are natty, Mr. Mugabe is not accidentally smart. And no amount of blame-shifting, psychological warfare or misinformation in the media can change his resolve.

Africa, a continent blessed with world’s most brightest brains and abundant natural endowments has been destroyed by both internally and externally influenced and imposed conflicts and hardships, hunger, abject penury, lack of security of both food and life and the list goes on and on. On their own sides our unskilled, visionless African looters and not leaders are well versed in diplomatic languages that have the grand capability of triggering war and confusions. Give a second thought to the war in Liberia and the attitude of the deposed President Charles Taylor, the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the attitudes of the Presidents of neighboring Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, the war in once peaceful and harmonious Cote’d’ Voire, the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the war between the SPLA and the government in Sudan, the war in Angola, the genocide in Rwanda and the war in Somalia.

The West bore heavy direct or indirect responsibility in exacerbating this hardship to an alarming state. From endemics, epidemics to pandemics, today it is Malaria here, AIDS/HIV there, Polio here, Ebola there, Cholera here, starvations, malnutrition and ethno-religious violence elsewhere. By so doing, the Black race was reduced to an endless struggle for survival and nothing good in this respect is expected from the western Media but rather a mere self-centered and biased report? Africans were left with nothing to cheer them up in their countries of origin, so they resorted to total and forced vagrancy, constantly searching and dreaming for a greener pasture, which translated into human trafficking, child abuse and all forms of abuses visibly manifesting and militating against the development of this great and blessed continent, Africa .

And now, it has been Africa and the rest of the developing world paying dearly a price for a Western country’s increased subsidy for her farmers, and the Western media has nothing to offer for Africa . Surprisingly, when it comes to Western media’s coverage of Africa, all it has to offer for Africans was large scale coverage of disaster and hunger and hardly one listens or read about African successes in the field of medicine, sciences and technology, engineering, politics and human rights.

Africa, a continent with about 56 countries is yet to secure a single sit in the United Nations Security Council since its about 30 years of inception. By this, Africans were told that France, Britain, USA and the rest of the UNSC members are to decide on their breakfasts, lunch and dinner and hence they knew what we wore on our bodies,  what we ate and what we are to eat and also our belongings and possessions. Whenever a down-to-earth leader emerges from an African country the whole West counter attacked him and brand him a bandit, a looter and more sinister a threat to the free world. This is because what they always need for Africa is dream and nothing but dreams. Hence, they all go against reality, this is well dramatized and covered in the egocentric Western media.

In conclusion, the Western media appears to be another civilization without utilization. If we can view the breath and comprehensiveness of their coverage of the rest of the continents, we can easily conclude that they are not doing justice to Africa .

Salisu Ahmed Koki,

Department of Civil Engineering,

Kano University of Technology,

Wudil,

Kano-Nigeria