Much has been made of the new issue of Vanity Fair which focuses on Africa, is it racist and exploitative? Is it riding the wave of the African Renaissance? Do celebrities really make a difference for Africa?

Ironically, the latest issue of EXTRA! produced by FAIR, an American media watchdog, arrived in the post yesterday and the news isn’t so glossy.

• In the last two years, two-third of the coverage of Sierra Leone by the US television networks ABC, NBC and CBS involved celebrities.  In the rare moments when celebs tried to bring up larger issues, the television reporters "diverted the conversation" away.  The only African interviewed about the country was US citizen Djimon Hounsou, who hails from Benin.
• Network coverage of the Madonna adoption frequently failed to mention the famine that was leading to children being placed in orphanages or any of the larger issues in that country. They interviewed a Malawian civil right leader once, relying instead on reporters from People and other celeb pubs.
• Much of the above coverage appeared on the vapid daytime shows. At night, when the so-called serious stories air, coverage of Africa for 2005 totaled less than one half of one percent. Many of those – including a special trip to Africa by NBC – were about the well known African Bono who  has become a leading source for Africa reporting.
• Zimbabwe, which is still in the grip of dictator Robert Mugabe and undergoing tremendous upheaval, was never mentioned on the the nightly newscasts for the entire year of 2006.

Some Fair information comes from the Tyndall Report.

Update:  FAIR’s Extra! article from which above information is taken is now online.

Having complained rather bitterly about the newest issue of Vanity Fair with its Africa focus, I picked up a copy of the magazine and now I’m eating a little crow here (tastes like chicken.) African Loft and others have been full of praise and it turns out to be, well, justified.  The issue isn’t just celebs — there is a piece by journalist Sebastian Junger on China in Africa and another by Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina on changes in his home country.  Plus, you can access Youssou N’Dour’s playlist online.

VF is heavy handed with the RED campaign (See Sokari at Black Look’s take on shopping to save Africa), and way too uncritical about The Gates Foundation, but it could be worse. 

Just take a look at the latest issue of Esquire, which includes The Americans have landed, an article detailing the growing American military presence on the continent.  I thought this was going to be an interesting expose but it turned out to be a propaganda piece for the US military.  Its author, Thomas P.M. Barnett, a contributing editor, is also said to be a strategist popular at the Pentagon.

Barnett’s favorite word for Africa is "backwater" which he employs multiple times as he explains how the Americans are enlarging their Africa Command (AFRICOM) to eventually include 12 "forts" to fight off the Bin Ladens of the world.  He proclaims that "nobody cares about Africa except Western celebrities" and doesn’t seem to have much problem with orders such as "Kill anyone still alive and leave no unidentified bodies behind." 

PANOS has a terrific journalism initiative in which they bring a group of African journalists to the G-8 meetings and have them blog from their perspective about the event.  This is important because Africa is such a political football at these meetings, and, obviously, African governments don’t have the GNP to get "invited."

One of the most interesting aspects of the African journalists’ take of the G-8 summit was how they viewed the protesters.  In the West, protests are so maligned by mainstream journalism that researchers who study how protests are covered call it the "protest paradigm."  You can literally predict the coverage (and surprise, surprise, it’s always negative).

Richard Kavuma of Uganda’s Weekly Observer didn’t see the point of the massive flexing of protest muscle.  He asked: "But will this violence against police and blockading of roads necessarily change the plight of people in poor countries?"  and concluded no.

Not every journalist agreed, another Ugandan reporter, Collins Vumira. had a more nuanced reading, and Francisco Xerinda of Mozambique saw the protests as working to help Africa.

For Westerners, it’s important to be reminded that not all Africans think alike, and a reminder to protesters opposed to global corporations, the World Bank-IMF, and the like, that not all Africans see their opposition as helpful.  So, while I rather disagree with Richard Kavuma, I’m still glad to hear his POV.

Thanks to Bill of Jewels in the Jungle for reminding me to listen to these voices.

A new initiative, CNBC Africa, is now broadcasting out of Jo-burg (thanks to Behailu Damte at African Path for the heads-up on this one.)   The first bureaus are in Lagos and Nairobi and may expand to Tanzania, Congo and Angola.  The show will cover the opening and closing of key markets among other business stories.  The CNBC website doesn’t have any specific pages up yet for the channel.

Media Channel reports the channel cost $22.5 million and has both South African government backing via the  Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa and Dubai investors (who also already own part of CNBC — don’t tell Fox News!)

The Economist reports that the channel hopes to have 9-10 hours of original local programming: "The aim is to project a more nuanced image of Africa than the procession
of disasters and diseases captured by Western television channels."  Summit TV is the existing competition (owned by Johnnic Communications and UK’s Pearson).

Business Day South Africa is not enthusiastic: "CNBC is an investor channel, not a business one. Failure to understand
the difference might be fatal. Is there an investment story – tellable
through the transparent reporting of listed companies on open markets -
to tell the wider markets about in Africa? Outside of SA, it’s going to
be hard."

Clearly the station is part of the Brand Africa/African Renaissance/Africa is Open for Business movement.  ( Simon Anholt has an interesting critique of Brand Africa from a different angle:  African countries would benefit from marketing themselves individually and not as a single entity because the "brand" has so many negatives.)  Hmm.

While I’m all for the idea of a more nuanced media image of African
countries, the let’s-privatize-the-whole-damn-continent-consequences-be-damned mantra so
relished in the blogosphere remains hard to swallow. 

Key CNBC Africa personnel:Trevor Ormerod, chief operations officer & Zafar Siddiqi, CNBC Africa chairman

The Cape Argus has this run-down on the new staff: (The most interesting show seems to me to be the Mining Africa one, depending on how it gets covered. Another interesting note is the number of women reporters involved.)

Alishia Naidoo: Previously with CNN International, Summit TV
main news anchor, Sky News International on African
markets news.  CNBC Africa Assignment: "Lagos Open".

Byron Kennedy: Financial journalist at Moneyweb,  Media
Relations at Absa head office.   Assignment:  mining industry.

Leigh Roberts:  Summit TV, chartered accountant, founded a biz section for Sunday Times.  Assignment: breakfast talk.

Mandlakazi Mpahlwa:
SABC, SAfm
producer and news anchor,  YOU magazine, anchor
on e.tv.  Assignment: Kaleidoscope.

Bronwyn Nielsen: Highveld Stereo, e.tv, Sky News International and
Summit TV.  Assignment: Regional Update, Markets Roundup.

Fenly Foxen:  5FM and SAfm, anchor for the car show,
Car Torque. Assignment:  Star Encounter.

Lerato Mbele: SABC news anchor. Assignment:  The Other Dimension.

Nikiwe Bikitsha:  Talk Radio 702, e.tv’s
Morning Edition, SABC3 and
SAfm. Assignment:  News at Nine ,  We – The People.

Peter Ndoro: M-Net, news anchor on Summit TV.  Assignment: Breakfast Briefing, Morning Call Breakfast show.

Here we go again.  First Bono was editor for the day of an issue of the Independent which he devoted  to Africa. Then Sir Bob Geldof edited the German tabloid Bild for a day in connection with "saving Africa" at the G-8 meetings in Germany. And now, now we Bono back in the editor’s seat on behalf of Africa, this time with July’s Vanity Fair.

It gets better:  They have a series of different covers (rotates on the website) featuring famous people who one is supposed to identify with helping Africa like Warren Buffett, Bill and Melinda Gates, George Bush and Madonna.    With friends like these . . . well you know the rest. And ,yes, let me add that Desmond Tutu, Dijmon Hounsou, Iman,  and, hell, let’s throw in Barak Obama, are pictured here too, but, really, Warren Buffett?

I was checking around on Technorati and most of the blogs seem to think it’s a pretty damn wonderful idea.  (African Loft’s, interesting new initiative BTW, "Caretaker" thinks Madonna’s work in Malawi has been unjustly criticized.

I beg to differ.  First, why couldn’t an African edit the issue?  Because this fairly clearly suggests that Africans aren’t up such tasks.

Second, some of these heroes are not saving Africa.  One example:

Buffett and the Gates Foundation have used investments in oil companies and other industries causing Africa problems to fund their initiatives meant to help, according to an investigation by the LA Times. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway for example "holds a $3.3-billion stake in PetroChina Co., a subsidiary of
the China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, the biggest player in
Sudanese oil." 

Um, that means he’s indirecting funding genocide. (A point poignantly brought home in the article by Sudanese refugee Gabriel Ngong living just down the street in the Kansas town where Berkshire is headquartered: "When he was told about Berkshire’s investment . . . Ngong said he was surprised and sad. "Our people
always trust Americans."

So good for Vanity Fair for concentrating on Africa but if it’s just an exercise in celebrity aesthetics that suggests a 19th century charity model, then really, why bother?

Like every other blogger in the universe with an African focus, I received an "official" TEDGlobal 2007 (Technology, Entertainment, Design)  conference e-mail with video a couple of days ago. I gotta admit my first reaction was to the interface of the video itself.   (Black Looks dubbed it "haute couture" video). Sweet, umm, except for the BMW commercial one must endure to get to the actual content, a talk by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, titled, "How to Help Africa? Do Business There." 

TED hosts annual confabs of movers and shakers such as Okonjo-Iweala, a Harvard/MIT grad and former finance minister for Nigeria (who in the latter position was paid in US dollars, which perhaps tells us something about her personal faith in Africa). 

TedGlobal 2007, being held in Arusha and sponsored by tech companies AMD and Google along with the arms dealer/media giant GE, appears to have a free trade emphasis. Doh.

Africa Path is doing a good job of blogging the event as is White African, who points out the timing overlap of this event and the G-8 where the Germans are apparently also talking about Africa (my local paper, the Los Angeles Times only reported on some German protesters getting arrested).   White African notes that TED speakers such as filmmaker Andrew Dosunmu are talking about changing Africa’s media image to emphasize stories beyond war,
famine and corruption. Jewels in the Jungle has a good round-up of resources on the conference (he also notes that PANOS has African bloggers at the G-8).

And it is very seductive, this idea of changing the image to change the reality, but as Sokari points out at Black Looks, the reality of the privatization mantra — and that appears to be the only POV at TED — is greater disparities.

When I want to read about African women, American women’s magazines ("Keep him happy in bed!" "Haircuts for under $200!") don’t exactly leap to mind.  But a new study suggests at least one of these magazines might make for more nuanced reading than the average newspaper story about African women.

"Stories for Women About Women: Ordinary and
Not-So-Ordinary African Women in Marie Claire," by Dovile Ruginyte of
Rutgers University, argues that the Hearst-owned women’s magazine tries to present African women differently. 

Ruginyte found that unlike Western news coverage, many of the African women featured in Marie Claire are not depicted as hapless victims. However, they do tend to be selected from a narrow range — generally urban, educated and middle class such as a Nairobi public information officer for UNICEF.  Rural or poor urban women are rarely considered. (If you visit their website right now, there’s a Q&A with an Ethiopian born model about her work with the World Health Organization educating Ethiopian women about child-birthing problems.)

The study goes on to note that women are presented particularly in terms of their relationship to American consumer culture:

"’Catherine from Rwanda tells the readers: ‘I met an American who let me listen to her iPod. I loved it’ (12-05). Similarly, Kelesamile from Botstwana proclaims that she ‘love[s] American soap operas’ (07-05). Finally, Margaret from Kenya reads The Hobbit, a fantasy novel popular in the U.S., and Roots – the saga about an African-American family (06-05)." 

[It's not clear to me whether the researcher or the magazine chose to leave out their family names, which seems like a way of diminishing them to Western readers.]

Despite certain positive images, the study confirms that the magazine does include some stereotypical portraits of suffering of African women. In addition, the magazine also infrequently includes coverage of visits to the continent by movie stars such as Drew Barrymore who sobs over the horrors of Africa.  (What, she couldn’t find a baby to take home as a souvenir?)

Ruginyte’s study will be presented later this month at the International Communication Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco.   

One of the interesting elements in the volatile Nigerian elections has been the use of technology to share information and watchdog the process. I’ve been looking around on mainstream media sites for coverage of this and haven’t been coming up with much.

Among the interesting projects:

• Nigerian Election Hotline (thanks to Jewels in the Jungle for his overview on this one) which describes itself this way: [the site] "aims to publish stories on the 2007 vote that might not otherwise reach the reading public." It’s funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute and moderated by Africa Confidential.
• Green Light Nigeria which describes itself as "Bringing together online journals by election monitors, human rights defenders, independent journalists and analysts."
• Network of Mobile Election Monitors which the BBC reports used technology originally set up in South Africa to work with communities in national parks.

As I wrote this, I found a similar, earlier round-up by the indomitable Sokari at Black Looks. She includes links to other Nigerian bloggers as well.

So here is my addition.  I searched the Lexis-Nexis database for "Nigeria" and "Nigerian Election Hotline, " and then with "Green Light Nigeria" and then "Network of Mobile Election Monitors."  I did this with these categories:

Major Newspapers (read: US, UK, Canada and Australia):  Number of stories: 0
News transcripts (broadcast): 0
Wire services:  Briefs from Telecomworldwire and Datamonitor newswire: 2

This doesn’t mean that US media did not cover the election (although that too is likely to have been slight in numbers), but the fact that they didn’t cover any stories about grassroots attempts to watchdog the process using technology says something.  This angle is exactly the sort of story that American audiences like, not to mention it would also be a great antidote to widespread misconceptions that Africans don’t understand technology, are living "back in time," etc. 

AfricaFocus has forwarded a link to the new Reporters Without Borders report on Sudan’s media scene.  The report is based on visits to the country in March 2007, and finds that since the 2005 peace accord, independent newspapers are more likely to challenge the government. The report encourages Western media to pay attention to these local sources.

The report provides several examples of Sudanese media criticizing the government, such as an article from the Khartoum Monitor that called out China and Russia for their support of the government: "They disregard human life and opt for quick and cheap gains. . . It is not solely the government of Sudan that kills its own people but it does so in collaboration with whoever helps it." 

The Sudan Tribune is quoted as writing: "Those who used the iron fist
to impose hardship on the population in Darfur and other regions in
Sudan will also have their own share one day."

Strong stuff. 

So for those who say it’s impossible to get the story in Sudan, this report suggests otherwise.  I have written previously about the Sudan media scene and the local reporters who have been taking tremendous chances in their efforts to change their government.  Why are local resistance efforts always underplayed or ignored?  Why aren’t their voices amplified?

Of course, there are still problems.  The Sudanese government manipulates the Western media by:

• Tightly controlling visas
• Limiting travel out of the capital (which is also often dangerous)
• Arresting reporters who enter illegally

The Western media have their own issues including parachute journalism in which reporters show up for a day or two to get the story with no background or understanding, then leave; and their lack Arabic language skills.

Coming soon: New research on Sudan and the media.

April marks the beginning of the anniversary of the 1994 Rwanda genocide in which at least 800,000 people were murdered.  Out of this incredible destruction, several media projects were born.

I’ve posted earlier about some of the various feature films ("Sometimes in April," "Hotel Rwanda," etc.) and documentaries ("God Sleeps in Rwanda," "Shake Hands with the Devil") based on those terrible days but the genocide also turns out to have led to some other ground breaking news-related initiatives.

One outcome of the genocide was the creation of the United
Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’
Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN),
which serves as a sort of news wire about conflicts in Africa, the
Middle East and Central Asia for the humanitarian community. Started in
1995 as a means of circulating information amongst organizations
helping cope with the aftermath of the genocide, IRIN has become a
multimedia source of alternative information about various
under-reported regions.  If you provide them a credit, you can also
re-publish their materials without charge.

Another outcome was the the trial for the three Rwanda journalists held by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in which they were found guilty of inciting genocide. The trying of media personnel for playing a role in genocide is extremely unusual. (One of the key such trials came out of the Nazi’s genocide campaign against the the Jews.)  Has the Rwanda trial discouraged other journalists from participating in hate crimes?  We will never know, but even if it stopped only one journalist from egging on listeners and readers to commit ethnic atrocities, then it will have accomplished a lot.   

Of course, the media coverage by other countries of the genocide has also been an area of great concern, at least among more reflective journalists.  One of those was Alan Thompson, who covered the genocide for the Canadian media, and has
since started several projects related to those events including an
educational exchange to help train Rwandan journalists as well as establishing an
historical archive of media materials from the time period.

Thompson also edited a new volume, The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, which came out earlier this year, that explores the genocide and various media-related issues (full disclosure: I have a chapter in this volume).  Readers of this blog may be particularly interested in the chapter
about how African media covered the genocide, penned by Professor
Emmanuel C. Alozie. One of the things I like best about the book is that you can read it online or download it for free.