Conceptual Critiques to African Journalism

Abstract

Discourses around both existential and desirable media models have been going on for decades now. The publication of the Four Theories of the Press (Siebert et al., 1984) first fleshed out what became known as the theoretical models of the media, namely, authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility, and soviet communist. Some of the factors that contributed to the characterization of the media, they argued, were political factors, defined by the type of government in power, the trade demands of the printers, and the dominant philosophical principles in society. Ouma (2018, p. 6) notes some of the contributory factors to understanding media and theorizing around it include “the general nature of the political system, the media regulatory regime, and the political economy of the media industry.” There were always attempts to contribute to this basic approach to understanding media. For example, Hachten (1992, p. 38) built on the four theories and added a fifth while varying the others. His modeling included authoritarian, communist, Western, revolutionary, and developmental, the last of which was then emerging in the developing world (Ogan, 1982; Lent, 1977). For a long time, Siebert et al. remained the dominant voice in characterizing media models. However, on the golden anniversary of the book, University of Illinois media historian and critic John C. Nerone (1995) edited Last Rights, providing a comprehensive critique of Four Theories. At the core of their arguments, the contributors to the Last Rights posited that only two theories – libertarian and social responsibility – were given detailed consideration in the Four Theories. The other two – authoritarian and soviet communist approaches to media classification – were seen as mere “straw men,” not fully developed and, in any case, possibly an aberration.