Folks, I hope our African Journalists and aspiring Journalists can learn a thing or two from this piece. Pay particular attention to the last five paragraphs. This is particularly true especially to our Gambia-L 'Aspiring Journalists' whose only claim to fame is blind criticism of Yahya Jammeh.
Western Media and Distorted Images of Africa
By Gabby Otchere-Darko Journalist, UK
I read with a cup of unsweetened disbelief parts of an article by Kobby
Ansah, a journalist in the UK describing Ghanaians in the UK as greeting the
Queen's visit as an opportunity to shed light on the potential of Ghana's
economy. Call me a pessimist, but the general impression was not all that
positive. The UK media seemed to be more concerned about the behaviour of
our MPs than the prospect of our economy. In fact, because of a number of
complaint I received from several enlightened Ghanaians in the UK over the
negative coverage in some of the prominent UK newspapers, especially the
Times and the Daily Mail, I sent a formal compliant to the editor of the
Times.
Mr Ansah spoke of the 'extensive coverage to the visit' by the Times with
the headlines of 'Queen is Hailed in Tribal Welcome.' It beggars belief
that Kobby Ansah could deduce the reporter, Alan Hamilton's article as
anything but a negative, racist and a desperate attempt to re-invoke the
old prejudicial stereotypical portrayal of the African as inferior,
primitive, tribal and with a culture lacking in finesse or aesthetic merit.
According to Alan Hamilton on the durbar of chiefs and people, "lesser
chiefs paid homage to the Great White Chief from across the sea on a dusty
parade ground under a merciless sky." On would have thought that such a
seasoned journalist as Mr Hamilton undoubtedly is would have been
ratiocinative enough to desist from describing African culture as 'tribal'.
Call me pedantic or a moaner but I cannot help but notice that the word
'tribal' appears to be normally reserved for Africa. It is, I detect, a
conscious effort to keep us stuck in the obtrusive pre-programmed boxes of
centuries'old prejudice.
He went on to describe the beautiful, magnificent, majestic and colouful
exhibition of the legendary Ghanaian hospitality under a cool canopy of
mighty parasols as merely a "marathon of native dancing and piercing
thunder of drums the size of oil tankers." You do not have to have a
doctorate in linguistics to decipher the demeaning undertone.
As if that was not enough, he insulted Asantes by insinuating that the
Asantehene's absence was not in fact due to His Majesty mourning his
predecessor but that Nana Osei Tutu II took "umbrage at not being given
first place in the presentation line-up" to greet the Queen. Really, is it
rather not the protocal that a visiting monarch goes forth to great the
residing monarch? Should we forever kowtow to the notion of white
supremacy?
Furthermore, he insulted Ghanaians by his unruly description of the
President's ceremonial attire to Parliament. He informed his readers that
President Jerry Rawling sat beside the Queen in an "all-enveloping green
and gold tribal toga", which had him "looking like a wrestler entangled in
his mother's curtains." May I inform your readers that it is not in the
custom of seasoned journalists of reputed broadsheet newspaper to show such
disrespect to a president. It was simply an unnecessary mockery of a whole
nation and her culture; underlining something deeply sinister and
disturbing. To present an African culture and people in this derisive,
insensitive and uncivil manner may seem strange to many of your readers.
But, be assured we are used to it here in the West.
Honestly, I cannot see a coverage which clearly shows that the reporter
chose to leave his proverbial 'Handbook of Anti-racist Etiquette' at home
before boarding the aeroplane to Africa as complimentary in any sense. With
a journalist like Kobby Ansah who appear to have this proclivity of
deducible weightlessness and intellectual capacity to discern racism and
negativity claiming to be a medium, racism, prejudice and the black
person's disease of psychological incapacity have a long tenure of
survival. We cannot beat racism if we do not persevere to eradicate the
imbalance in reports about Africans and about Westerners.
The Daily Mails' Stephen Glover picked up the baton with a damning article
on the President as having 'blood on his hands' and comparing him to
Augustus Pinochet, the disgraced ex-Chiliean dictator. It was a clear
attempt by the right wing paper to win domestic political points by
steaming into the Foreign Secretary's so-called 'ethical foreign policy'.
But, did it have to be at the expense of Ghana? Who cares, appears to be the
obvious answer.
The television stations did not fair any better. All the channels
concentrated on Ghanaian parliamentarians' alleged abuse of royal protocol
in not listening to the Queen's address in 'dignified silence' but,
instead, jeered and cheered when the Queen made reference to the drawing to
an end of the President's second and final term of office. I wondered
whether it was a subtle attempt to portray some form of 'uncivility' on our
politicians part. But, then, who asked the Queen to meddle in our politics?
What disenchanted many Ghanaians in the UK were the positions some of these
reporters took to make their broadcasts. The BBC and the Sky News
correspondents, in particular, chose to stand at very dusty, 'ghetto' side
of town to broadcast to the nation, here. It was quite baffling, bemusingly
so. It was as if to say, with Schadenfruede, don't worry folks, there are
still well behind us in this long and wide-goose race of the races.
In other words, they appeared to be reminding their world that Africa has
not changed for the better and the African still deserves to be looked down
upon. As if by some divine coincidence, another article in the dailies
pointed to a group of school children from Greenwich, London, whose
prejudiced image of Ghana was shattered when they visited Tema. These future
leaders spoke of their surprise that they were not housed in mud huts and
trees but lived in 'proper' houses and were privileged with many of the
niceties and comforts of life.
You may wonder, but the plain truth remains that many people in the West
have a distorted image of our continent, which is far from helpful. It
reinforces archaic sentimentalities about Africans as primitive and does
not help the African to unharness his inherent sense of creativity as he
has being imbued with a deeply damaging sense of not being up to it.
The fundamental truth, albeit unpalatable is plainly this: Whereas, Western
journalist are doing their outmost best to propagate the West's
stereotypically negative images of Africa, our journalist are inadvertently
helping to keep alight the all-consuming flames of the white man's
superiority by continualy reporting to the African selectively on matters
that psychologically make us feel inferior and give credence to the myth
that all is rosy on the other side - beyond the corn farm.
Hardly ever does a positive image of Africa is shown to readers, listeners
and visual audience in the West. Well, that is not entirely true. We do
tend to get heavy doses of beautiful pictures of the lions, elephants,
zebras and other animals in the safari. Notwithstanding, occasionally
tarnished by the bad, bad African poacher who devilishly slew the wonderful
and more important gorilla for his survival.
Images are not only important but also very powerful. The battle for the
minds of Africans through control and ownership of the media has been a
one-sided affair for far too long. As Marcus Garvey, the father of
Pan-Africanism, and the inspiration behind Dr Kwame Nkrumah, argued in 1929:
"The white man's propaganda had made him the master of the world and all
those who come into contact with it, and accepted it, have become his
slaves. [We are] now calling upon . members of our race to discard the
psychology and propaganda of all other peoples and advance our own."
On the same note, Inge Blackman, a black programme maker based in the UK,
explains that white male stories are particular but portrayed as the
universal human condition. They have been pumped at us and into us for so
long and in such an overwhelming way that it has left little space for
alternative visions.
According to the historian the late Dr John Henrik Clarke: "In the mass
media, such as television, radio, newspapers and religious literature,
African people are rarely ever portrayed as playing a heroic role and most
of the time are not portrayed at all." But, may I remind you that the first
ever recorded Christian martyr was an African woman called Perpetual.
But, like the writer Amon Saba Sakana put it: "Intellectually, once you are
challenging the history of lies, inventions and fabrications made about our
history, culture and traditions, you get pushed into a corner. Simply
because they have the means to do it, the finance to do it and the power to
control you and define what you will and will not get."
It is the collective moral responsibility of African journalist to tell it
as it is, too. To use the memorable words of a fellow journalist, Michael
Khesumaba Jess, "it is not only what you see that matters but also what you
don't." The earlier we remember that it is in nobody's interest other than
the African's to uplift Africa the better. It is within the power of our
journalist to spread the flames of the African Renaissance far and wide,
inducing our long-tortured selves with the necessary dose of enlightenment
as to the real deal.
And, the real deal is simply this: we are not universally respected abroad
and we seem to believe that there is justification for this because our
definition of all that is well and good is within the confinement of the
lexicon as prescribed by Eurocentricism and happily subscribed by our own
social actors.
Stella Orakwue, a television producer and former Deputy Programme Editor for
the now defunct News At Ten, put it more bluntly: "We [as black people]
don't respect ourselves enough." Perhaps, buried beneath our legendary
Akwaaba for foreigners is a sad and self-fulfilling sub-conscious prophecy
that we respect foreigners more than we do our own.
Respect the achievements of outsiders, by all means; but don't at the same
time forget that no one nation has been able to make a convincing claim to
attaining the sought-after heights of 'civilisation' and prosperity without
outside influence. You gain not just by marvelling with admiration the work
of others while you relegate your own naturally-besotted creativity to the
realm of lethargy. Dormant is the domain of self-deprecation,
self-deprivation and self-perpetuating stigma.
In Kobby Ansah's article he referred to a Mr Alexander Ekow Bray of London
as saying, "if the rest of the international community is interested in
solving the problems of Africa, then Ghana should be the starting point."
Amen. Long shall we pray and look up unto the skies for almighty manna to
fall from heaven, everlastingly oblivious to the earthly fact that we are
the absolute freeholders of an estate called Eden.
WOOOOW!!!!!
_____
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