Sanity in African Journalism
Journalism operates on a defective precept - the belief that bad news sells. It’s hard to determine how the media institution came about this thinking, but the golden rule has been this: the average news consumer would quicker pay to get a slice of dreadful information than he or she would heartwarming ones. For a long time administrators of news the world over have lapped up this credo and the media subscriber has somehow fuelled it, consciously or otherwise. So what is it in the make up of humans that supposedly attune them to bad news?
Given the choice, would I pick up a Saturday newspaper which leads with a cover on rape, robbery and gruesome killing of a family of six in a squalid suburb last night, or one with a brilliant expose on a jubilant Egyptian national team which won the African Cup of Nations trophy the previous evening? Naturally, the report of the murder of innocents should draw my empathy and solidarity, but do I have to be forlorn so very early in the morning when I could be bubbly? I am sure going to read the murder story if it’s tucked in between the pages; it needn’t be on the cover by all means.
The media in many parts of Africa is deeply infatuated with this preference for the odious aspect of events, in much the same way the western media establishment is – and because many practicing journalists have been tutored on the western concept of what makes the news, its gathering and dissemination, they keep the fire of bad news burning. What has kept most foreign tourists - who desperately want to tour Africa - from adding the continent to their itinerary? Save for the trickle who visits East Africa to view the Big Five, much of Africa is a no-go area for hordes of travellers. The media in the West has succeeded in feeding them with frightful images. But Africa doesn’t hold a monopoly of misery. That said, is the media in Africa so oriented and enabled to turn the tide in our favour? As the practitioners carry on at the moment, it’s doubtful.
Sadly, it’s not just negative stories that suffuse local media (print specifically) nowadays; fiction and falsehood (based on rumours) have had a field day as well. In Nigeria, authorities and individuals have had to refute and denounce stories that are obvious untruth. “The press should learn to ascertain its facts before publishing same,” one angry high court judge was quoted as saying last April, when he discovered that the report of proceedings in his court as published in the papers the next morning included some bogus claims. “It doesn’t help to misinform the public because of profit considerations.”
Days afterwards, a section of the Nigerian media speculated that President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who had flown to Germany to treat an allergy, may have died in the process. Of course, it turned out just that – a speculation. “It would seem that anytime some media houses have no story to sell their papers, they would create imaginary anxiety over the president’s health,” Segun adeniyi, Special Adviser to the president on Communications, said in a newspaper interview of the president’s return. “I guess those reports must have lowered his [Yar’Adua’s] estimation of some of our newspapers, especially those who take delight in peddling such stories, without as much as verifying…”
About the same time, the South African publication Sowetan published a lead story on “Night of Bliss”, the all-night healing crusade hosted by Christ Embassy at the Johannesburg Stadium. Quoting an unnamed ‘source’, the publication claims that the several testimonies of healings given by the sick and afflicted are stage-managed and rehearsed.
My first thought after reading the piece was to ask: what’s the motive? To the writers’ credit, they at least know something about balancing a story. They quote two informants each for and against the crusade but opted to blow the negative comments out of proportion (the same bad-news-sells syndrome rearing its head again). But what they have done is nothing near "Investigation" - it is a mockery of that word.
Could this be another attempt by a section of South African society to downplay and rubbish a positive and people-oriented project in that country? I want to believe that hundreds (perhaps thousands) were healed at the said crusade who, due to time and space restraint, may not have had access to the podium to testify. What stops the duo of Getrude Makhafola and Tebogo Monama (the authors), if they were so bent on unravelling a deceit, to identify and go after the ones who confess to have been healed that evening? It is not unlikely that a good percentage of them will be from the SADC (Southern Africa Development Community) region, if not exclusively from South Africa itself.
What would it cost to follow up on a few attendees to ascertain whether or not they were indeed healed, even if that investigation last weeks? It makes no sense really to dumb down a programme like that on the comment of a single anonymous 'source', when all the reporters had to do was sit behind a desk in an air-conditioned room, handset to the pinna and ask questions that’s bound to yield the response they crave. And why would any editor qualify that laziness as investigating?
"He was recruited by one of the pastors and told he would be paid if he helped to draw crowds," the paper writes.
And I ask: how many persons can a single man draw, when the organisation in question (and one accused of the bribe-for-crowd) deploys every conceivable media known to the world today - multiple websites, Satellite television, print publications, billboards, Ipod – to publicise its activities every now and again? Now, why would a ministry broadcasts its healing crusades LIVE (as the Jo’burg event was) if it's got something to hide? If the organisers know the healings are contrived, would they risk the possibility of discovery and ridicule and showcase same to a global audience?
The Christ Embassy Healing School, I hear, has a massive and breathtaking structure in Randburg. These testifiers - as well as many others like them from other countries - have family, friends and acquaintances that can go public and disclaim these testimonies as farce. How come no-one has done than since?
And why would the editors at Sowetan wait for a rare event as the “Night of Bliss” to try their hands at mischief, when they could easily have asked either of the pair of Makhafola and Monama to go undercover, go into the Healing School to see things for themselves. I am certain they would have more than enough materials to develop a convincing story from than a single ‘source’ can yield.
"Pastor Chris is both controversial and mysterious. The press is barred from taking pictures at his healing services," the paper concludes. The first half reads more like hearsay than a statement of fact. And the second half? Plain ridiculous. The paper fails to state just how ‘controversial’ and ‘mysterious’ the preacher is. The editors at Sowetan must be told that such unsubstantiated one-liners are hardly what investigative journalism is about.
If you wish to investigate an individual or organisation, do you need their permission to take shots? Would you rather collect incriminating facts openly of covertly? What then is investigative reporting if journalists cannot take care of a simple thing as focusing a lens in an open air location to give the write up credibility? For heaven’s sake, this is the IT age; camera phones are just about everywhere these days. The thought that even annoys is the fact that the Sowetan journalists did not even think it right to attend the crusade. When was the idea to do the story muted? Was it an afterthought (as it most likely would be), occasioned by a baseless claim post-event?
Authenticity and in-depth reporting, propped by conscientious research, will do more to elevate the credibility of the profession – and its practitioners – on the continent than devoting precious pages and airtime to junk. |
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