How Africa is wrongly framed by the media

The west too often views an entire continent as gripped by corruption, tribal conflict, human disasters and bizarre goings-on.

The views of William Gumede and the media play a large part in this portrayal.

According to William,

Stereotyping of Africa, its problems and solutions, has devastating consequences. It has helped retard the continent's development.

Amongst the areas thae he highlights

1.western media influence which African leader becomes a "good" leader. This is rarely based on their democratic commitments, more on their rubber-stamping, often in return for aid

2.the conflict in Congo is framed as one of "tribal" wars, but neglect the crucial element of western companies fuelling the conflict, by paying off rebel factions.

3.The global financial crisis caused by irresponsible lending in industrial nations is affecting Africa worse. Yet because the impact of the global recession on Africa does not feature prominently on news networks, there is little obligation from western governments and international bodies, such as the IMF and World Bank, to adopt policies at national and global level to ease the burden on African countries.

Both traditonal and new media still frames our views of the world.

A fascinating study into how the media frames our view of the world over at Paul Bradshaw's blog.
Nicolas Kayser-Bril has created a series of diagrams of the world which show how a number of news organisations focus on different parts of the world.

Nicolas makes a number of observations,firstly that traditional newspapers have a very insular view of the world,favouring the more developed countries that are closer to home.Secondly the web based media has much the same views and it is only the blogosphere that covers a widerrange of topics and countries.