The State of Media Freedom in Africa
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Date
2011
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of Social Sciences and Communications at St. Augustine University of Tanzania
Abstract
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?
Description
Journal Articles
Keywords
Media Freedom-Africa
Citation
African Communication Research. The State of Media Freedom in Africa. Faculty of Social Sciences and Communications at St. Augustine University of Tanzania. 4(2)