Editorial: Blaming The Media For Telling The Truth

Foreign media organizations recently found themselves the targets of an attack – a mild rebuke, really – by Ghana’s president, Mr. John Kufuor, who complained about what he and his fellow African leaders see as the foreign media’s tendency to report negative stories about Africa while ignoring some positive developments taking place on the continent. Addressing the Franco-African summit in Cannes, France, in February in his capacity as the chairman of the African Union, Mr. Kufuor called on the foreign media “to desist from painting our continent with one brush as a place of doom and gloom just because there are conflicts in some parts.”

It is easy to understand the frustration of a leader like President Kufuor as a result of press coverage of Africa that seems to constantly portray the continent as nothing more than a tragic collection of failed states, where wars, ruthless despots, inefficient governments, corruption, and HIV/AIDS are the norm. Mr. Kufuor leads a country that could be fairly described as a modest African success story. Ghana is doing relatively well economically. Politically, it has transformed itself from a hideous military tyranny into a nation ruled by law, one that observes all the basic freedoms and human rights called for under the United Nations charter.

But progress in Ghana is not synonymous with progress in Africa. Contrary to what President Kufuor and others say, much of the continent is, in fact, the very picture of “doom and gloom.” None of the stories the foreign press covers is a fabrication: they all happen to be accurate representations of the realities on the ground in Africa, realities that are all too often grim.

Even as Mr. Kufuor lambasted the foreign media at the French-African gathering for reporting bad things about Africa, some terrible things were occurring in two countries – Zimbabwe and Guinea – which all but weakened his argument and which the media couldn’t be blamed for reporting. The regime of Robert Mugabe had unleashed a vicious campaign of violence against the political opposition in that country, sending a number of prominent opposition figures to the hospital with serious injuries. One of them, a woman, later died from the injuries she suffered after being severely beaten by the police. In Guinea, Lansana Conte, who, like Mugabe, has been in power for well over two decades, ordered his troops into the streets to stop protesters demanding his resignation. When the dust finally settled after several days of unrest, some one hundred innocent citizens lay dead in Conakry, the capital, all killed by Conte’s soldiers.

Zimbabwe and Guinea are among the countries with the worst governance records in Africa, both with more than fifty percent unemployment rates, no food, and not much of anything else. Yet their aging and senile autocratic rulers refuse to step aside and make room for other people who might have better ideas about how to run a nation, choosing instead to squelch opposition by any means, including cold-blooded massacres.

The litany of Africa’s woes is endless. Darfur has been the scene of genocide for the past four years in what looks like a slow and prolonged version of Rwanda, whose thirteenth anniversary was observed last month. Somalia has been without a government for fifteen years, becoming, meanwhile, a killing field that has lately seen an upsurge in the slaughter. The Democratic Republic of Congo celebrated a recent presidential election with a bloodbath that left six hundred people dead in the streets.

And in Zambia, AIDS-related orphans are dying from starvation in an orphanage while the country’s government sits on top of a huge stockpile of wheat that it had purchased from its own farmers, waiting for the U.S. government and other international agencies to provide the funds to pay for the wheat to feed Zambia’s own starving children. It doesn’t get any stranger than this, does it?

It may be hard to admit, but such horror stories essentially define Africa. For news organizations, domestic or foreign, not to report them as regularly and as truthfully as they should would not only be morally indefensible; it would be criminal negligence as well. Of course, there are some bright spots in the equation, as President Kufuor pointed out, and they also get highlighted by the foreign media. For instance, Ghana’s impressive efforts to create a viable and vibrant democratic society have been highly praised by the same foreign media the president criticizes. The truth about Africa must always be told even if it hurts, even if it’s not what the leadership wants to hear.