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Journalist's Journal

By Uche Onyebadi Posted Jan 1 2004

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I'll not be in a hurry to forget Oct. 12. That day, in the evening to be precise, a piece of news catapulted me into the stratosphere of disbelief.

It was as if profanity had hijacked the television screen. But what I saw and heard was far from sacrilege. CNN had broadcast some news about Nigeria. And it was not its usual morbid story from Africa.

Instead, CNN reporter Jeff Koinange went poetic about Nigeria's hosting of the 8th All African Games in Abuja, the capital city. He described the facilities at the ultra-modern stadium as “world class” and used words to describe a job elegantly accomplished by the managers of the event.

If he had been commissioned by the Nigerian government to broadcast this piece, I bet he could not have come up with anything more splendid. Somewhere in the report, I concluded that Koinange had lost his CNN manual for news reporting or had simply forgotten about his editorial gyroscope. There was no way he could weave his report about Nigeria in particular, in such elegant prose, and survive the hammer. But it appears he did.

The fact is, stories about Africa and several developing nations normally do not have any positive ring around them. They are sparkling examples of doom and gloom journalism. But here was Koinange on TV, reporting about Nigeria in a rather refreshingly different manner. You can imagine my sense of shock and awe at what I saw on the screen – a reaction worth consideration.

Journalists do not have factories to literally brew stories. So, if Africa offers disasters and pollutes its streets with tissues of human-rights abuse, why must we blame reporters for describing things as they are?

Let's say one is reporting about comrade Robert Mugabe. Does a reporter have the latitude to file reports that would aid good digestion? I doubt it. The iron-fisted man in Harare has taken Zimbabwe downstream. Yes, he is faced with rather intimidating economic problems, but the truth is that his reservoir of positive solutions is facing a tremendous drought. Yet, he clings to power like a man in an intensive-care unit who is inseparable from his oxygen tubes.

So, what do we expect the reporter to say in such a situation? Embellish the truth and call a fork a tiny spade? That would be journalism in reverse. But, then, I ask: Is Mugabe all there is about Africa? The truth is that the continent has enough good stories to last an eternity for any news channel.

But here is the problem. Many international news organizations simply short-change themselves by consigning Africa to the periphery of their news orbit, thereby denying themselves the juicy stories from the continent.

Here is an example. A few years ago, an American friend was reporting in Africa for the U.S.-based The Christian Science Monitor newspaper and radio. Though his organization considered Africa important, he was just a one-man-anti-riot squad, covering the entire continent from his base in Nairobi, Kenya.

As good as my reporter-friend was, how truly effective could he have been to oversee the entire continent all alone? I doubt he had the opportunity to visit more than 10 of Africa's 55 countries after living in the continent for about eight years. Therein lies the trouble with covering Africa. When limited manpower is devoted to coverage of such a large area, would it still be a surprise that the only news events that make sense are those that deal with violent overthrow of governments or AIDS. All other items dissolve into insignificance.

I do recognize the cost implications of sending battalions of journalists to Africa. But there is no need to. Africa has so many well-trained journalists who can be employed to do the job in collaboration with their foreign colleagues. Indeed, such indigenes might be better placed to understand the nuances of events and places they are reporting. And doing so is relatively cheaper.

Another challenge exists. Has it bothered the international news executives that, since 1986, Africa has taken no less than four noble Nobel prizes in literature for works written in languages that are foreign to the authors? Something could be said about this feat, especially when native speakers of the language have not come close to winning such globally recognized literary accolades in that genre during that time.

A story about this could portray the African continent in another light. And those who read it in newspapers or get it from television and radio would certainly note that wars, hunger, famine, diseases, rickety economies and so on, are not the only things that can come out of Africa. Maybe the colonists who caricatured Africa as the “dark continent” set the stage for these bleak reports in the Western press.

However, CNN and Jeff Koinange's report have shown that this remnant of ancient mythology can be cast into history's incinerator.