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Editors issue alert on major news networks
2008-04-09 09:45:15
By Bernard Mapalala, New Delhi
Tarun Basu, the CEO of the Indo-Asia News Service, has urged African and Indian editors to tell stories from their own perspective.
He said it was wrong and dangerous for them to continue relying on Western media networks that are fond of portraying Africa as a continent of disease, catastrophes and other negative developments.
Basu was speaking to the editors at a conference held in New Delhi prior to the two-day India-Africa Forum Summit that ends here today.
He called on the editors to forge closer links and address issues on which they could find themselves stereotyping one another negatively.
Other speakers noted that, much as the task seems to be difficult, Indian and African media networks needed to see that they were represented with correspondents covering one another`s news in both parts of the world to bridge the existing information gap and counter the slanted stories run by other media networks.
Saeed Naqvi, a leading Indian columnist, said Western powers had discovered that management of the media was as good as winning the war.
He was referring to the coverage of the Iraq war, which he said was been staged to suit the military goals of the invading force.
The columnist alluded to various stories that are commonly stifled by big power interests, sarcastically concluding: ``We are in the era of free press!``
Underscoring the role of media in enhancing peace and stability, a speaker from Africa cautioned that major western news agencies were there to serve their respective countries` global and strategic interests and were now increasingly setting the agenda, shaping public opinion and threatening African democracy.
He said that events in Zimbabwe had proved that a sustained foreign media bombardment, coupled with targeted economic sanctions, could remove a government from power.
The speaker also reminded editors of their critical role in setting agenda and shaping public opinion for the sake of enhancing national stability.
Another speaker, Indian `roving editor` Sankarshan Thakur, told of family members who were murdered and whose story was not able to get space in Indian newspapers immediately.
The story was later run as a filler in the inner pages, simply because those involved were ``untouchables`` - not celebrities.`
``This is a silence that screams today in the face of empowered media,`` noted Thakur, adding that news was being sacrificed at the altar of advertising and stressing that bad news does not sit easily with good adverts.
Nic Dawes, Deputy Editor with the South African the Mail & Guardian, spoke on the role of technology and ``trends of convergence``.
``The web is today eroding the print media, emerging technological development has had a major impact on the media with the web threatening the growth of the print media,`` he pointed out.
India’s state minister for external affairs, Annand Sharma, earlier spoke to the editors on the importance of India and Africa prioritising food security, health security, energy security and climate change.
He said the issues were interlinked and one could not resolve one while ignoring any of the others.
``Our people deserve a better future. We shall overcome the burden of the past and write a new history of a resurgent Africa and emerging India,`` noted the minister.
The minister said both India and Africa were struggling to get their ``voice of their dignity``.
He then alluded to the fact that India`s Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, experienced his personal transformation while living in Africa.
``It was Mahatma Gandhi who went to Africa and stayed for 22 years. The discrimination and humiliation of the people of Africa moved him as he forged his tools of Satiagara (non-violent resistance),`` notes Sharma.
However, he said it was wrong to take non-violent resistance to mean passive resistance, adding that Gandhi’s Satiagara was so effective that it defeated the mightiest empire of the 20th century - Britain.
Closing the forum, Indian External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee quoted Gandhi, saying: ``Commerce between Africa and India will be of exchanges of ideas and services.``
He noted that India would continue to support Africa in the development of human resources, capacity building and technical assistance.
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