Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2010). Africa's media: Between professional ethics and cultural belonging. Windhoek: Fesmedia Africa, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
In 2005 I published Africa’s Media: Democracy and the Politics of Belonging. One of the main findings of that study was that the media have assumed a partisan, highly politicised, militant role in Africa. They have done so by dividing citizens into the righteous and the wicked, depending on their party-political leanings, ideologies, regional, cultural or ethnic belonging. By considering the Cameroonian experience, the book sought to understand how scapegoatism, partisanship, and regional and ethnic tendencies in the media have affected their liberal democratic responsibility to act as honest, fair and neutral mediators – accessible to all and sundry. It did this by looking at polarisation in the press and at how the media have shaped and
been shaped by the politics of belonging since the early 1990s.
been shaped by the politics of belonging since the early 1990s.
Almost everywhere in Cameroon, citizens expect the urban elite – including journalists and media proprietors – to make inroads into the modern centres of accumulation. Since the state is a major source of patronage and resources, it, together with other economic institutions, must be manipulated to divert the flow of finance, jobs and so forth to the home regions from which the heterogeneous urban originally derive. Thus these elites are under pressure to act as facilitators and manipulators with respect to the state. Through elite development associations, they lobby foreign agencies and NGOs to provide their home villages or regions
with new sources of wealth and livelihood. In return for so doing, they may be rewarded with neo-traditional titles in their home villages. These honours confer on them symbolic capital that is not expressed in material wealth but sustained by what Fisiy and Goheen have termed ‘the conspicuous display of decorum and accompanied by public respect’ (1998:388), that in turn can always be exploited for political ends at regional and national levels. In certain cases, investing in the village is a way of consolidating success in the city, especially in the politics of
ethno-regionalism.
with new sources of wealth and livelihood. In return for so doing, they may be rewarded with neo-traditional titles in their home villages. These honours confer on them symbolic capital that is not expressed in material wealth but sustained by what Fisiy and Goheen have termed ‘the conspicuous display of decorum and accompanied by public respect’ (1998:388), that in turn can always be exploited for political ends at regional and national levels. In certain cases, investing in the village is a way of consolidating success in the city, especially in the politics of
ethno-regionalism.
African media most of the time do thier reporting without ethical consideration
Posted by: Samuel Kazungu Muramba | June 28, 2017 at 08:39 AM
THANK YOU FOR THE POST
Posted by: susan | May 31, 2018 at 04:30 AM