On Monday night at the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library at USF St. Petersburg, a group of local reporters were inviteds were invited to share stories and hear directly from 17 African journalists who have been participating in a program that the USF St. Petersburg Department of Journalism and Media Studies hosted in partnership with the Edward R. Murrow Program for Journalists.
The event was co-sponsored by the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists. After snacks and soft drinks were consumed, the organizers of the event (who included USF-St. Petersburg Journalism professor Bob Dardenne) broke up the assemblage of U.S. and African reporters into two groups, where a moderator asked what were some of the greatest challenges that they faced.
Many of the African reporters mentioned the oppressive hand of the state government.
Aaron Maasho is from Ethiopia. He said that he's had big problems with government interference in providing information. And he said tensions remain between the government and independent (or 'private ') media.
Loughty Dube works for the Zimbabwe Independent. He spoke about the problems with state media being in control, and having to work and curry favor at times with the country's Minister of Information.
South African reporter Sibu Ngalwa said that many Zimbabwean journalists are actually working in exile in his country.
Another problem the African reporters described was simply having little or no access to electricity, which can obviously play havoc in getting access to television and the Internet.
Uganda scribe Peter Ntimba mentioned that community radio in his country is critical in providing information to the masses. He said it's probably the most effective form of communications, and says there's been a renaissance of sorts of late. Previously only Radio Uganda was broadcasting, but he said stations are going beyond the capital of Kampala.
But Ntimba labeled some of the laws on sedition that reporters must follow in Uganda as being "draconian," discussing how the government can (and does) arrest reporters, and then release them the next day. He says those prisons are, to say the least, not very comfortable, and they have a chilling effect on the independence of those journalists.
Liberian reporter Robert J. Clarke used the terms sustainability and empowerment when he said that a simple objective for members of the media in his country is to just to make a decent living. He meant that those who are struggling financially are much more vulnerable to taking bribes to influence coverage.
He also bemoaned the fact that there is no FOIA — Freedom of Information Act — in his country, like U.S. reporters enjoy here.
Sierra Leone's Samuel Valcarcel said that the only quality radio station for independent news in his land comes from the United Nations. But he said that soon that channel will merge with the government, which he fears will then fall prey to the heavy-handed influence from Sierra Leone's version of what we would call Big Brother.
There were moments of mutual understanding. Valvarcel said that after recent elections, the media was sharply divided. Sharon Tubbs, an editor at the St. Petersburg Times, said that in the U.S. there is a similar sense of parallel universes, the vast difference in coverage between Fox News and MSNBC being one example.
Valcarcel also said that he envied the U.S. audience, because "here you have a 100% literacy level." Well, we don't of course, but the point was that it was significant in comparison to the literacy rate of his home nation.
The reporters will end their stay at Poynter today, and fly back to their respective homes later in the week.
This article appears in Oct 8-14, 2009.