Comment
Don’t shoot that foreign correspondent, he’s dying
Posted Monday, August 23 2010 at 00:00
Those who want “negative” images of Africa – the alleged cannibalism, African porn, witchcraft, corruption, mob lynchings, squalor, and tribal rage gone amok — no longer have to look for it in the Western media.
The African media do it better than anyone else. If you want the good stuff, there’s is no shortage of African sources for that too.
Every nation needs an external eye to draw its attention to flaws that it cannot see.
Africa can collectively use a lot of that right now, because the continent is changing and throwing up a lot of complexities.
This requires financial resources and the type of clever correspondents most struggling Western media can no longer afford.
However, part of it doesn’t require money.
Just a shrewd editor to wake up, smell the coffee, and realise that while most votes in Africa are stolen, occasionally some get away clean.
However, even with more sophisticated coverage, my sense is that traditional-style Western foreign correspondent is mostly irrelevant today, and will soon be dead altogether.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: cobbo@nation.co.ke
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That the point, these foreighn media are also becoming more amd more poorer and their countries folk are getting that poverty as well. See France, Italy, Germany, Britain are all try to expel Romanians (Roma)and trying to show as nothing is happening! Lol! Europeans fighting their own. The economic crisis is a learning point to africa to produce its own products and services.
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I like your take on the foreign press in Africa. The Economist said the same thing last week, that west press is becoming irrelevant in the developing world. And I think this has a lot to do with our own journalists like you, COO! Keep up the good work.
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