Relaciones Internacionales – Comunicación Internacional

Africa in the Western media

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Africa is not a country

There are 54 states on the continent, yet the media insists on referring to it as one place. A new app identifies the culprits

Many public figures and journalists have no problem describing someone from Botswana and a person from Mauritania as «Africans». They probably wouldn’t call them «Americans» if they were from Brazil and the United States, even though the distance between the two is the same – and the economic conditions as different.

You don’t have a film called Out of Asia and you rarely go to Oceania on holidays (instead you talk of vacations in Australia, New Zealand or another island). Yet for a continent of one billion people three times the size of the US, it’s no problem to call it by one single name – «Africa«! This is hugely detrimental to many countries. When a civil war starts in the Central African Republic (Africa!), it negatively impacts countries as far away as Senegal (Africa!) and Lesotho (Africa!). This has to change.

What can be measured can be changed. By measuring how many articles talk of «Africa» without mentioning a specific country, we show in the app Africa Isn’t A Country how widespread the prejudice against the continent actually is. And we give journalists a tool to measure their progress towards more sensible reporting.

Because «Europe» is used to describe the European Union and «America» is used as a synonym for the United States, the coverage of Africa can only be compared with that of Asia. See how the Guardian, for instance, uses «Africa» as an all-purpose word to describe anything from Tangiers to Cape Town. Comparing the mentions of the three biggest African economies with the three biggest Asian ones, we see how much less precise reporting of African countries remains:

Guardian journalist don’t use «Asia» when talking of Hyderabad or Shenzhen. They use «India» and «China». But for Africa:

The methodology vastly understates the problem. If a piece talks at length of «African» leaders discussing «African» issues in «Tunisia», it will not appear in the statistics above.

More interestingly, the sections suffering from this syndrome are not culture, fashion and travel, as one could think. Looking at the seven sections that contain more than half of all the articles mentioning only Africa, the ones most prone to treating Africa as a country are world news, Comment is free and Global development.

Most of the time, journalists are not to blame. The tweet from Bill Clinton, above, is as meaningless as announcing that he landed between Calgary and Buenos Aires. As a head of state, he must have noticed that Obasanjo and Mandela did not rule the same country, though. More recently, the German defence minister explained that «the situation in Africa is serious». I hope that she sends the Bundeswehr to more precise locations.

The blame does not fall entirely on celebrities and politicians. Guardianistas produced some surprising pieces, notably one that informs us that Africa can feed itself. There, the name of the continent is mentioned 13 times but the reader will not know that South Africa, for instance, is a net food exporter (like 18 other African countries).

Methodology

See here the list of articles that contain the term «Africa» but no other African country name. See the same query for Asia. Unfortunately, The Guardian has a section called «Middle East and Africa» that produces a lot of false positives, such as articles about Syria that appear in the results because of the name of the section. To correct this, all articles containing the names of Middle Eastern countries have been excluded from the count, which decreases dramatically the count of articles for Egypt. The total count is also inflated because of multimedia pieces (an image displaying the names of specific countries will be included in the «mentioning only Africa» category if the title mentions only the continent)

Why Africans worry about how Africa is portrayed in western media. @RemiAdekoya1 for @commentisfreehttp://gu.com/p/3kmqy/tw 

Why do Western media get Africa wrong?

By Nanjala Nyabola, writer and political analyst, currently based at Harvard Law School

Al Jazeera. Last updated: 2 January 2014

There are fundamental differences in how Western and African media cover African events. Yesterday I witnessed yet another twitter storm erupt over Western coverage of an African situation. A Guardian correspondent offered an analysis of the on-going crisis in South Sudan that, judging from the comments on the website, was well received outside South Sudan.

Yet, the reaction from the South Sudanese online community was the opposite. Relatively well-known twitterati roundly criticised the article as a complete misread of the situation on the ground. As someone who has both criticised Western media for their coverage of Africa, but has also relied on Western media for information about places that I have never been to, I found it fascinating. Who should you believe in a situation like this? And why do Western media keep getting coverage of African issues wrong?

My inclination is to believe that the South Sudanese bloggers, if for no other reason than they are relatively immune to the vagaries of the news cycle, remember the same journalist was touted as «the first Western journalist on the scene» – a descriptor that the South Sudanese community rejected. Does it matter if he’s a Western journalist? What does that say about the premium that Western news outlets place on information given by Western (read white) reporters versus non-Western reporters?

This casual descriptor inadvertently disregarded the lived experiences of the thousands of literate, experienced South Sudanese writers, journalists and informants, and created a hierarchy of knowledge that appears to be largely based on race. So, given the choice between a person whose truth seems conditioned by race, and another whose truth is based on experience on the ground, I’m inclined to believe the latter… MORE

Why do African media get Africa wrong?

By Patrick Gathara

Last updated: 08 Jan 2014 11:32

Nanjala Nabola recently caused a bit of a stir with her Al Jazeera article asking, «Why do Western media get Africa wrong?» Reading through the piece, which was both interesting and informative, I couldn’t help but wonder: Just who does get Africa right? Is there even such a thing as getting Africa right?

From the outset, let me state that I agree with many of Nanjala’s criticisms of media coverage of events on the continent. As she says, much of it is devoid of nuance and context and seem oblivious to what Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes as the «danger of a single story» – the reductio ad absurdum of the tale of a continent of over a billion people and 54 countries, their existence, history and stories compressed into one simple, superficial, easily regurgitated cliche: «The hopeless continent.» «Africa rising.» «Magical Africa.»

However, it is not just Western media (itself a rather obtuse concept) that are guilty of reporting in this manner. African media commit many of the same sins though, given the fact that most only broadcast to discrete home audiences, it is easy for them to escape censure. While Africans in almost every country on the continent have the opportunity to be regularly appalled by their portrayal on CNN, Al Jazeera and BBC, it is rare that Kenyans will flip the channel to check what Nigerian journalists are reporting about them.

This is because few African media houses are actually trying to cover the continent for the continent. Many have their hands full reporting (or not reporting) news at home and do not think of Africa so much as a story that needs to be covered, but as part of the rest of the world and take their cue on reporting it from the Western outlets. As South African photojournalist and film-maker Greg Marinovich notes, «Most African media stories on Africa are from international wires.» Few have bureaus or send reporters outside their home countries, choosing to rely on the same Western reporters they delight in bashing.. MORE

[Today in PD] If Western Journalists Get Africa Wrong, Who Gets It Right? http://goo.gl/fb/iPqu2 

If western journalists get Africa wrong, who gets it right?

The Kenyan writer and graduate student at Harvard Law School Nanjala Nyabola recently caused a bit of a stir with her Al Jazeera article asking «Why Do Western Media Get Africa Wrong?» Reading through the piece, which was both interesting and informative, I couldn’t help but wonder: Just who does get Africa right? Is there even such a thing as getting Africa right?

First let me say that I agree with many of Nanjala’s criticisms of media coverage of events on the continent. As she says, much of it is devoid of nuance and context and seems oblivious to what Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes as the «danger of a single story» – the reductio ad absurdum of the tale of a continent of over a billion people and 54 countries, their existence, history and stories compressed into one simple, superficial, easily regurgitated cliché. «The hopeless continent.» «Africa rising.» «Magical Africa.»

However, it is not just western media (itself a rather obtuse concept) that is guilty of reporting in this manner. African media commits many of the same sins though, given the fact that most only broadcast to discrete home audiences, it is easy for them to escape censure. While Africans in almost every country on the continent have opportunity to be regularly appalled by their portrayal on CNN, Al Jazeera and BBC, it is rare that Kenyans will flip the channel to check what Nigerian journalists are reporting about them.

Few African media houses are actually trying to cover the continent for the continent. Many have their hands full reporting (or not reporting) news at home and do not think of Africa so much as a story that needs to be covered, but as part of the rest of the world and take their cue on reporting it from the western outlets. As South African photojournalist and film-maker Greg Marinovich notes, most African media stories on Africa are from international wires. Few have bureaus or send reporters outside their home countries, choosing to rely on the same western reporters they delight in bashing… MORE


 

 

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