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Browsing Daystar University Publications by Author "African Communication Research"

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    The State of Media Freedom in Africa
    (Faculty of Social Sciences and Communications at St. Augustine University of Tanzania, 2011) African Communication Research
    In the view of the authors in this issue of African Communication Research the media are expected to set the agenda for debating the national development goals. These authors assume that editorial and journalistic freedom is essential for such agenda setting. This presupposes that the media have the editorial capacity and leadership to set such an agenda—a very big “if” indeed. This also presupposes that there is the “vision”, “the will” and “the unity” in the civil society to push national political, economic and other forms of leadership toward goals such as those enunciated in the Millenium Development Goals. If the media would open a forum for coming to some form of consensus regarding national goals, would there be articulate leadership to point out clearly where the nation should go? And would this leadership be able to persuade or apply sufficient persuasive coercion to bring those controlling the political, economic and other sources of power to cooperate. In virtually all African countries a fundamental problem is the self-serving political leadership that places its own enrichment and the enrichment of their friends above the national welfare. Have the media been able to bring this political leadership to a sense of responsibility? There have been rare moments of unity and new vision in the civil society—the liberalization coalitions in the early 1990s, the occasional movements to throw off intolerable dictatorships, the outcry in the face of insane genocides. There have been rare moments when the political leadership has steered a nation toward consensus that there should be universal, free, high-quality primary and secondary education with easy access to technical or professional education—and that those with the resources should pay for it! Can we say that the media utilized the their freedom of expression to set the agenda to build this consensus?