Don’t call it “Media for Development”!

World Press Freedom Day might be the appropriate occasion to remember a few home truths about media which sometimes get lost in donor efforts to use journalists for their own developmental agendas. This instrumentalisation of media is just a very bad idea! Yet it is done all the time, with the best intentions, of course. Let’s start with three widely shared assumptions on the role of media in Africa – and elsewhere:

• They are the bellwether of democracy (no fair election without free media)

But these days new jobs are being added on to the full plate of journalists working already under challenging conditions. And most of these agendas have to do with “development”, be they defined by African governments which often are the enemies of media freedom; or by western donors who don’t seem to think too much about the role of media. Both sides just want to use them.
Western organisations want to use the media for:

•    Conflict resolution (peace agenda)
•    State building (transition agenda)
•    Promotion of reforms (transformation agenda; “regime change”)
•    Rolling out HIV-prevention programmes (health agenda)
•    Promoting certain economic strategies (globalization agenda)
•    Raising awareness about climate change (environmental agenda) etc.

Those who have been long enough in the trade know how it is being done. Journalists are being trained for this and that: the last few years it was HIV-prevention, currently it is the about protecting the environment.

A conference on reconciliation in Sri Lanka, a workshop on the peace building in New York, a seminar on “Economic Partnership Agreements” in Brussels, a Media Summit on climate change in Bonn. All very well, but what is the message we are sending here?

One by one these efforts are laudable. Journalists should learn and know. And there should be more specialised colleagues in Africa, although under current working conditions such a specialisation proves practically unsustainable. Just talk to the media owners.

Yet in total this donor practice in media training amounts to driving our own western fads and fashions through the African continent without much thought. What we are doing here is using journalists to run campaigns - which is absolutely the wrong message to the media houses, to governments and to the public.

Journalists are supposed to be independent and should not be seen as hired guns, however commendable the mission is. If western donors favour “developmental” journalism, African governments will practice it the same. 

They will
•    expect their own broadcasters to do nation building as the government sees it
•    ask newspapers to mediate ethnic conflicts as the ruling party wants it
•    want media houses to promote information campaigns as the propaganda ministry defines them

This will all be done in the name of “national unity”, you bet. And we have  been showing them the way to agenda-journalism!

In short, we should not promote “media for development” or “peace journalism”. There is only good and bad journalism!  And that is what you say you train journalists for. Because so trained, truly independent and responsible journalists knows not to cry fire in the ethnic theatre, not to agitate for the opposition nor sing anybody’s tune.

Of course, African journalists need to be trained, need to acquire the skills of the trade as do journalists everywhere. They need to learn about health issues and economic agreements. And even about the origins of conflict. But don’t call it “journalism for something”.

To overcome this western dominated and agenda based training approach African journalists will have to develop their own courses and curricula which factor in the conditions they are working under and reflecting their position in society (see Nyamnjoh, Francis: Africa's Media - Between Professional Ethics and Cultural Belonging, 2009).

But where are the seminars/workshops/conferences to discuss how western concepts of the media as watchdog, agenda setter and gatekeeper can be translated into the different African environments?

For sure, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of the Media, Access to Information are universal concepts. But what is “the public” to citizens in West- East- or Southern Africa? Do we know? Does anybody know? We only know that the envisaged transformation of state into “public” broadcasters has hardly worked anywhere in Africa.

Many African columnists will tell you and write about the “public sphere” in Habermas’ work because that is what they have studied in their European education. But how does that translate in their village?

Where are the African media practitioners taking up this challenge and western donors providing the means and platforms for that?

You don’t hear much about that. Not that we from the West have been asking, in our promotion of journalism for this and that or media for development.


- April 30, 2010 by Rolf Paasch