Let Africa Report For Africa

I have from time to time come on spot over what I have strongly opposed in the public checks and balances in Africa. Today I happened to get criticism from a close friend and a blogger Emma Kwezi over my post on Africa needs advocacy journalism.  Emma argued that the west media is biased to report against Africa. He

Felix Kilonzo in MKU studios

cited that NBC and MSNBC in the USA are entirely Democrat and CNN and FOX entirely pro-Democrat.

On that paradigm I don’t see any problem with a media house entirely supporting certain political affiliation for the best of its audience. To avoid contradicting my earlier post of ‘Why Africa Need Advocacy Journalism’ I underscore the need of our citizens to ignore a cluster of political parties and vest interest in 3 main political outfit that would provide leadership in either liberal or conservative manner.

Journalism in Africa should play the pivotal role of checking these tyrannical presidents who have redefined monarchy that brings down the whole idea of democracy. However, my criticism always remain with the tendencies by foreign media houses to bring foreigners to report on our internal matters where as there is enough talent to do so in our African Countries.

In 2009 while using my defunct Blog I told the foreign media houses to let Africa Report for African affairs and I believe on doing so Africa would no longer be seen as the Dark Continent but part of world. I remember talking to my foster dad about it where I asked whether it was fair for the western Media to come to Africa whenever there are elections, Post Election violence, disasters and civil wars. Do you think that Africa is a den of lions that there exist wars without end?

No, I don’t think that even adds up. The last time I watched CNN for instance, the correspondent to the world’s largest media house was Mackenzie and I believe he served the whole of East Africa giving biased media reports to CNN about Kenya. I do remember a time when CNN was forced to apologise after running a story with banner ‘violence in Kenya’ and yet that was a total lie. Why would you report about us if you can’t hire any of us? That remains the unanswered question by the west Media and therefore I seek to know, how credible are their reports about any of the 54 African nations?

Do we need to buy their biased content just to understand the situation in non-west countries? How informed are they to start with?

When I talked about Advocacy journalism, I never quoted any media house in the west but came local to our very own Citizen TV where I handpicked Alex Chamwanda. Of course I know of very competent western Media personalities like my favourite Anderson Cooper (who came out that he is gay last year), Maryanne Amanpour and our very own Isha Sesay from Liberia, there are many.

But the bottom line lies here, why don’t they employ Africans as ground people to report on matters affecting us as Africans? I wish to hear from you through twitter @starkolix on the same………….