RSS feedRewriting Africa: Journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault
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| Hunter-Gault pushes for diverse reporting on Africa, supports local journalism |
“Reporting is dominated by the four ‘d’s… - death, disease, disaster and despair.”
Hunter-Gault has a lot to say regarding the state of reporting from the African continent.
She describes how local journalists are becoming an important part in checking political power, as well as safeguarding democratic institutions.
On democracy:
On democracy:
“In Ghana, for example, in the last two elections, journalists fanned out across the country and saw to it that the ballots that were being counted were being counted properly and accurately. They made it impossible to cheat, because they were calling the results in, and it was being announced on the radio.”
On self-censorship in the media:
“I think a lot of journalists self censor, because they don’t think there is going to be receptivity to their Africa reporting. That self-censorship becomes a self-defeating and self-fulfilling prophecy. Journalists who are invested in trying to get news of the continent out just have to keep slogging, keep on fighting for space. They have to be creative in the way they propose and sell stories.”
On biased reporting:
“You know, we may or may not agree, but we journalists are not policy makers; we’re there to get information.Sometimes you have to press and press and press and press, but I think a lot of times, reporters have formed their opinions about something. No amount of facts or explanations is going change that, especially if they’ve been conditioned over the years, maybe by wrong information, to see things in a certain way.”
Distinguished journalist Hunter-Gault is one of the icons of the civil rights and desegregation movement in the United States. She was the first African-American woman to enter and graduate from the University of Georgia, where she received her undergraduate degree in journalism in 1962.
10 October 2006 | 07.00am (CEST) | posted by
Marie | |
TAGS Politics & Governance | Ethnicity & Culture | Media & Information | History & Heritage
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