When Western media hold up mirror to our society
We are always quick to condemn Western media for negative reports about Africa. It makes sense that we have positive stories all over, yet the meat that makes their reporting is the rot that is the fabric of our continent.
After a recent BBC Africa Eye and Panorama undercover investigation, Sex For Work: The True Cost of Our Tea, I am convinced reporting negatively about Africa is a necessary poison. It is a price we should pay silently.
In the documentary, you will learn about the tough choices women seeking employment as tea pluckers make. That they have to give sexual favours in order to secure employment, get lighter duties or so that their contracts are renewed.
Consequently, as the 100 women the reporter Tom Odila and his team talk to revealed, some get pregnant and hence abort, while others are infected with HIV.
Such stories should not be wrapped in gold foils and hidden in places the masses cannot access. No, they should be told over and over. The media is a powerful tool that holds those in power accountable. And we have had totally ground breaking stories that have exposed loathsome crimes and violations of human rights, that if they were never told, we would be living a lie that our continent is a beautiful place.
Article 19 of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression,” and that the right, “includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
It is thus barbaric to create a barrier for those who are painting the continent how they see it, especially if such revelation can help highlight the rot surrounding us.
Journalism, nowadays, should provide solutions rather than just inform and entertain. With great investigation and reporting, just like research, solution-based journalism is contributing to academia, policy and knowledge.
In that light, any story, whether it is painting our continent as a dark one or not, is opening our eyes to what’s happening on the “ground”, adding a body of knowledge to the public, and sparking conversations on issues affecting various communities across the continent.
It is with the BBC Africa Eye documentary that issues such as poor working conditions for employees working in tea farms and sexual harassment from bosses are coming to light.
Maybe instead of condemning the western media, and to some extent local media, on reporting what bleeds, we should encourage them to uncover more rot but also tell their stories objectively.
This way, we can see the pictures through their lens clearly, without distortion, blur, or bias.
However, I must also state that it is not enough to tell the good about a people or place. What matters is can the story solve a problem?
—The writer is a Communications & Multimedia Journalism Student, Riara University
