Specific Local Priorities

85 Table 3: Overview of Nigeria’s Media accessibility and consumption.

Source²⁰⁴: Press Reference.com.

86 posits that “the analysis of international media shows that countries of the Third World are mere reproducers of modernity in metropolitan centres of the world.”²⁰⁹

The developing world wants to ‘catch-up’ with the West with the conviction that it would be

“modernised” like them. In this direction, the mass media was the immediate first attraction.

Most media in the third world were exported, for example, from the British (to British colonies), from French (to French Colonies) and from Northern American. The question to be asked is: Was this the right media for the third world countries? Was there an alternative at the time? Alrabaa has argued that media patterns that developed in the third world grew as an extension of those of the industrialised societies²¹⁰ and Katz posits that this has led to an

‘uncritical implantation’ of western values and demands, such as “the goal of non-stop broadcasting…and the striving for up-to-the-minute news”²¹¹ on the third world and with it also the transfer or adoption of inappropriate and unnecessary objectives which came to displace possible preferences or alternatives.

There was also the media role from the educational or diplomatic perspective such that large numbers of students were given scholarships to study, mostly in former colonial nations. And those who returned, came back not only with the skills acquired, but also brought back with them values and attitudes. There is thus “the implicit idea of foreign study in the view that through an exposure to the values, norms and practices of economically advanced societies, the trainees may come in time to change their perspectives on their societies, their work roles, or themselves in ways which strengthen their effectiveness as change agents.”²¹² It is in this context Sitaram and Haapanen state, “content analysis of the media in the developed countries in the 1950s and 1960s would show that their coverage of the underdeveloped countries emphasized the same attitude, that is, that economic aid should result in the acceptance of the giver’s political philosophy.”²¹³ In 1951, the BBC began Radio courses for overseas broadcasters and in 20 years, 500 had graduated from the course. What was the content of these courses? Were the contents specifically useful or relevant within the context of Africa?

These were questions that unarguably were not addressed. A UNESCO expert attached to the Mass Communication Department of the University of Lagos, Nigeria, after a conference remarked, “for many participants, it was the first time consideration had been given to the use

209 Ibid, p.7.

210 Ibid, p. 12.

211 Ibid, p.9.

212 Sami Alrabaa, 1986, p.13.

213 K.S. Sitaram/Lawrence Haapanen, 1979, p.148.

87 of broadcasting towards specific developmental ends.”²¹⁴ As a consequence, many scholars have advocated that aids be given to future broadcasters to be trained in the environments in which the media will be put to use. The donors could naturally provide the funding and other necessary logistics for its success and sustenance.

3.6.2 VARIATION IN VALUE APPRECIATION

Unlike in most traditional African settings in which the Supreme being is God, this notion in the West because of secularisation has taken on a new meaning in which the “Supreme Being becomes the Supreme Value”. There is a mad rush for ‘neuigkeiten’ (newness or innovations, inventions), that which is new, that which is in vogue, that which brings more pleasure, that which brings more ‘value’, that which surpasses the old. This is seen in captions on major newspapers, which promotes the ‘negatives’ in the so-called ‘Breaking News’ in electronic media. What are the contents of this so-called ‘breaking news’ items? Violence, not structural violence but direct violence and “generally the newness of the news will serve as the basic guidelines, and will distort the world’s image in the direction of events.”²¹⁵

Today, inspite of the obvious invaluable good of the media, some scholars have argued about the potent dangers this advancement brings with it. One area of particular note is the relationship between the media and the increase of aggression. While scholars like Kaiser, Ulich, Lamnek and Seitz believe that aggressiveness or specifically deviant behaviours are only not necessarily outfalls from the media, Stefen, Screiber and Häring believe strongly that the media has so much to do with it, and indeed contributes significantly to aggressiveness.²¹⁶ Using what he terms “instrumental variables” Helmut Lukesch tries to explain that the frequencies of violence viewing by television correlate with deviant behaviour much less than violence viewing by video or cinema.²¹⁷ He therefore argues that this is so because television contacts are more frequent than video or cinema contacts. In a research he carried out in a school he states thus: “so in our sample, only 5.9% of the juveniles go to cinema weekly, 31.5% once a month, 29.2% once per year and the rest almost never. The average video exposition is 23 minutes per weekday compared with 129 minutes of television exposure. “²¹⁸

214 Ibid.

215 Lee Philip, 1999, Communication for all: The Church and the New World Information and Communication Order, Indore, p.124.

216 Helmut Lukesch, 1988, “Mass Media Use, Deviant Behaviour and Delinquency”, in: The European Journal of Communication, Vol. 3, Frankfurt am Main, p. 53.

217 Ibid, p.60.

218 Lukesch carried out this research in Germany in the late 1980s with 801 school teenagers at different levels of secondary school with an average age of 14. See Helmut Lukesch, 1988, p.60ff.

88 Again, unlike in the traditional African setting, where brotherhood, communal existence and mutual support for one another are key values, there is a general drift towards individualism and verticality, which in other words means competition: who wins and who loses. News has value only when it is presented in the win-lose (or winner-loser) equilibrium. Elections are not seen in terms of whether issues, aspirations, hopes and concerns, are adequately articulated, but in terms of who wins and who loses. Politics is viewed in the same way, whether the political actors get their programmes through the system or not. Music is reported only when there is a contest: Who is the leading artist or novelist? In a nutshell, “the focus is often much more on the loser than on the winner, on ‘the fading has-been’ rather than on ‘the rising would-be.’²¹⁹

3.6.3 MUTUAL SUSPICION

There is the general tendency for the World to be divided into two: The West in the ‘Centre’

and the others in the ‘Periphery’.²²⁰ Unfortunately, due to the many years of influence from the west, those at the periphery actually see themselves as such: simply at the periphery. At the international level, many people in the periphery, especially Africa and Latin America, see themselves only from the prism of the west or from the ‘western eye.’ Crisis is seen as part of the periphery’s cosmology, while progress is believed to be the exclusive preserve of those in the centre. In other words, the periphery is a place where life is negative, “a place where, by definition, things go badly, hence negative news from the periphery is correct and objective…

(and where there is progress), the Periphery does not share in the progress”²²¹ 3.6.4 CONSEQUENCES

What kind of news communication are there? Lee Philip argues that Readers/Listeners/Viewers demand what their subconscious commands. This is particularly true when the news communications available to the 3^rd world are those “created by the production, distribution and consumption of distortion of the real world of which one is not aware because the underlying cosmology is exactly that, a juxtaposition of worlds completely different in makeup and cosmology. Does the man born in Auchi, who has never travelled out and

219 Lee Philip, 1999, p.124.

220 ‘Centre’ and ‘Periphery’ are two concepts coined and used by Lee Philip in his work, Communication for all:

The Church and the New World Information and Communication Order, Indore (1999) to refer to the advanced and less advanced worlds respectively. See pages 122ff.

221 Lee Philip, 1999, p.124.

89 has never known any other world apart from his, understand the import of the images and news he views and listens to daily via the television screen in front of him?

In an attempt to reduce this over- or under-representation of certain structural categories and relationships, or readjust or filter this news in such a way that it favours certain types of dramatic news, which is compatible with the social cosmology that is familiar, what is the consequence? It is immediately termed “interference with freedom” or “censorship” because such a redirection of the known world view is not too clear or understandable to the owners of the communication media. Thus, the assumption that “the image of reality compatible with certain prejudices of one’s own civilisation is necessarily correct and that all other images can arise only because of a lack of freedom”²²² is intrinsically and fundamentally faulty.

Again, the problem of consciousness and education comes in. The reader/listener/viewer demands cosmology-compatible news and so the journalist/editor must provide that in ‘super compatible headlines’ if he is to make ‘gains’ and remain in business. Ultimately then, it is a market problem mainly.²²³