Ferrus
30 Nov 2009, 10:30 AM
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/12/26/1229998733181.html
In the First World, my world, newspapers are shrinking and journalism is eroding, being worn away by collapsing sharemarkets, by the vortex of the internet, by inglorious practice and mindless appetites. It seems we have evolved to a point in our economy and society where serious journalism has lost value and faith. It is the indulgence of a shrinking audience, which many media corporations are increasingly disinclined to sponsor. And so the quality press dutifully records and analyses its own demise. The preoccupation of journalists, like me, who operate in this world is how long it might continue to provide a livelihood.
But in this other reality - in the hemorrhaging Democratic Republic of Congo, or across the border in Rwanda, in Mozambique, the country I have just left, and its woebegone neighbour Zimbabwe - the practice of journalism is still a matter of aspiration. It is a distant, glittering prize. It remains fundamental to the evolution of functioning society and credible democracy. Journalists shining light into these dark places bring the prospect of security and safety. Their efforts are needed to underwrite the confidence of investors and aid donors in making a different future. They expose corrupt, vile interests. The preoccupation of journalists who operate in this world is how long they might continue to stay alive.
...
At the intersection of these worlds, limping into Kinshasa like a battle-scarred survivor into no man's land, I find John, the photographer engaged for my Congo project. He moves stiffly on legs damaged by a landmine in Angola. His loss of mobility means he doesn't shoot a lot of news these days, he says. He's moved to magazines and paparazzi pictures. He tells me he earned the equivalent of a handsome year's pay for a single, long-lens picture of a pregnant Angelina Jolie in Namibia.
In the next breath he recalls long stints living in mud huts and the struggle to find drinking water - let alone enough income to support his distant family - during his years covering African conflict. While news organisations are increasingly reluctant to pay the price of capturing the kind of grim reality that was once John's trade, Angelina delivered the mother lode. John lights another cigarette and shakes his head, as if appalled by his own anecdote.
He was once arrested four times in a single day in Kinshasa. But that was back in the Mobuto years. Dark times. He sits back on his chair in the street cafe and looks around. So are these, he observes. Next to us, watchful white mercenaries drink beer, and black men in tattered military uniforms - guns over shoulders - put their hands out for money. John can't pull his camera out in the city. He's followed whenever he walks from the hotel. And we are watched even within it. "There are spies everywhere," was the caution breathed to me on the stairs. I'd been on the internet too long, talked to too many people.
Corrupt, corroded Congo turns on intimidation and silence. Local journalists are frequently jailed and occasionally shot - one was killed just last month. During our brief visit to Kinshasa some of the security forces we see everywhere are busy rounding up dozens of civilians and even military perceived to be less than supportive of President Joseph Kabila. The Congolese to whom I try to speak about local politics are nervous, but anxious for the "truth" to find its way out. "The truth will set you free," insists one impassioned expatriate. But it won't, I caution - it will lock you up. According to Human Rights Watch, 200 Congolese activists are being held without trial in Kinshasa's central prison, not so distant from our hotel.
...
Also from Maputo I recall the anguish of the peasant farmers who are part of the Via Campesina movement, gathered there from all corners of the world to talk about the world food crisis, about food security, and food sovereignty. From Bolivia and Brazil, the Philippines and Indonesia, one after another they had told me of their struggle to be heard as governments and corporations and media moguls collude to keep them voiceless. Giving me their names and their stories is itself an act of trust, a political act.
...
And yet against all odds, in this world, journalism endures, truth is prized. While editors across Australia, the United States, Britain, struggle to prop up editorial budgets and stem falling circulation, the sales of a political newspaper called The Zimbabwean grew from 10,000 copies a week when it began in February 2005 to 200,000 copies before last year's election.
Writing recently for Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, the paper's exiled editor, Wilf Mbanga, recounted his guerilla publishing enterprise - penetrating President Robert Mugabe's media blackout by printing in South Africa and trucking editions across the border, as well as publishing online. When the truck was hijacked and torched by gunmen, donors whipped around for a new vehicle and 100 tonnes of newsprint. Next the Government imposed a whopping tax on the paper's sale, but still the presses ran, though circulation dwindled to 60,000 as readers struggled to balance their hunger for food and their appetite for truth.
...
In the same issue of the Harvard review where Mbanga writes about journalism and democracy in his world, there is another article outlining some of the concerns for journalism and democracy in mine. It cites a survey of American editors that found that 85 per cent of large dailies, and half of smaller ones, across the US have axed staff in the past three years. "Where financial markets see fat to be trimmed, editors see loss of the capacity to pursue complex stories that take days, weeks or months to uncover," the article reflects. "Too often, the decision - based on expedience and expenditure - to publish what is popular or entertaining trumps what is necessary."
The article quotes the deep concerns of the veteran American journalist and commentator Bill Moyers for a society with a less watchful, less engaged, less resourced media. Moyers has devoted much of his long career to contemplating the quality of democracy and its relationship with the quality of journalism. In an interview last year he spelt out his concerns in terms that resonate like the beating drum through a Kinshasa night: the deafening preoccupation of one cloistered reality obliterating the message of a broader truth.
Reflecting on the dumbing down of US media as financial - and, he argues, political - pressures reduce critical news content, he recalls how "just the other day the major morning broadcast devoted long segments to analysing why Britney Spears shaved her head, and the death of Anna Nicole Smith got more attention than the Americans or Iraqis killed in Baghdad that week". Shades of Angelina and Angola. "The next time you're at a newsstand, look at the celebrities staring back at you. In-depth coverage on anything, let alone the bleak facts of power and powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people, is as scarce as sex, violence and voyeurism are pervasive."
..
Moyers believes that the dominant institutions of the American press are no longer the guardians of democracy, and instead keep reality away from audiences and readers. "The news business is at war with journalism," he says.
Walking past the last cordon of guns, past the broken aircraft littering the tarmac of Kinshasa airport, I felt a knot of anxiety deep in my belly. Taking off on a short flight to a safe place, feeling the knot unravel, I wondered what it must be like to have that fear inhabit your gut for weeks or years - the reality of local journalists who question power or corruption in the Congo, or who file their stories for The Zimbabwean. I consider the people whom I have met who know the truth of how that feels, who understand the privilege of publishing and broadcasting their words, and they take my breath away.
Perhaps, as with democracy, we are doomed to the media we deserve. I am reminded again and again in Africa of the value of truth. After 25 years in newspapers it feels shameful to be surprised by journalism, by its power and its fragility.
An article from Australia on the value of journalism. I have to say - although I have not crystallised my views in the same way, modern news media presents this image to me - of tripe processed and served up at a constant 24 hour pace.
A slightly more comedic look, and ascerbic one is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQOfIPCgJH0
Or at least I think that's the right one, I can't view Youtube at the moment.
In the First World, my world, newspapers are shrinking and journalism is eroding, being worn away by collapsing sharemarkets, by the vortex of the internet, by inglorious practice and mindless appetites. It seems we have evolved to a point in our economy and society where serious journalism has lost value and faith. It is the indulgence of a shrinking audience, which many media corporations are increasingly disinclined to sponsor. And so the quality press dutifully records and analyses its own demise. The preoccupation of journalists, like me, who operate in this world is how long it might continue to provide a livelihood.
But in this other reality - in the hemorrhaging Democratic Republic of Congo, or across the border in Rwanda, in Mozambique, the country I have just left, and its woebegone neighbour Zimbabwe - the practice of journalism is still a matter of aspiration. It is a distant, glittering prize. It remains fundamental to the evolution of functioning society and credible democracy. Journalists shining light into these dark places bring the prospect of security and safety. Their efforts are needed to underwrite the confidence of investors and aid donors in making a different future. They expose corrupt, vile interests. The preoccupation of journalists who operate in this world is how long they might continue to stay alive.
...
At the intersection of these worlds, limping into Kinshasa like a battle-scarred survivor into no man's land, I find John, the photographer engaged for my Congo project. He moves stiffly on legs damaged by a landmine in Angola. His loss of mobility means he doesn't shoot a lot of news these days, he says. He's moved to magazines and paparazzi pictures. He tells me he earned the equivalent of a handsome year's pay for a single, long-lens picture of a pregnant Angelina Jolie in Namibia.
In the next breath he recalls long stints living in mud huts and the struggle to find drinking water - let alone enough income to support his distant family - during his years covering African conflict. While news organisations are increasingly reluctant to pay the price of capturing the kind of grim reality that was once John's trade, Angelina delivered the mother lode. John lights another cigarette and shakes his head, as if appalled by his own anecdote.
He was once arrested four times in a single day in Kinshasa. But that was back in the Mobuto years. Dark times. He sits back on his chair in the street cafe and looks around. So are these, he observes. Next to us, watchful white mercenaries drink beer, and black men in tattered military uniforms - guns over shoulders - put their hands out for money. John can't pull his camera out in the city. He's followed whenever he walks from the hotel. And we are watched even within it. "There are spies everywhere," was the caution breathed to me on the stairs. I'd been on the internet too long, talked to too many people.
Corrupt, corroded Congo turns on intimidation and silence. Local journalists are frequently jailed and occasionally shot - one was killed just last month. During our brief visit to Kinshasa some of the security forces we see everywhere are busy rounding up dozens of civilians and even military perceived to be less than supportive of President Joseph Kabila. The Congolese to whom I try to speak about local politics are nervous, but anxious for the "truth" to find its way out. "The truth will set you free," insists one impassioned expatriate. But it won't, I caution - it will lock you up. According to Human Rights Watch, 200 Congolese activists are being held without trial in Kinshasa's central prison, not so distant from our hotel.
...
Also from Maputo I recall the anguish of the peasant farmers who are part of the Via Campesina movement, gathered there from all corners of the world to talk about the world food crisis, about food security, and food sovereignty. From Bolivia and Brazil, the Philippines and Indonesia, one after another they had told me of their struggle to be heard as governments and corporations and media moguls collude to keep them voiceless. Giving me their names and their stories is itself an act of trust, a political act.
...
And yet against all odds, in this world, journalism endures, truth is prized. While editors across Australia, the United States, Britain, struggle to prop up editorial budgets and stem falling circulation, the sales of a political newspaper called The Zimbabwean grew from 10,000 copies a week when it began in February 2005 to 200,000 copies before last year's election.
Writing recently for Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, the paper's exiled editor, Wilf Mbanga, recounted his guerilla publishing enterprise - penetrating President Robert Mugabe's media blackout by printing in South Africa and trucking editions across the border, as well as publishing online. When the truck was hijacked and torched by gunmen, donors whipped around for a new vehicle and 100 tonnes of newsprint. Next the Government imposed a whopping tax on the paper's sale, but still the presses ran, though circulation dwindled to 60,000 as readers struggled to balance their hunger for food and their appetite for truth.
...
In the same issue of the Harvard review where Mbanga writes about journalism and democracy in his world, there is another article outlining some of the concerns for journalism and democracy in mine. It cites a survey of American editors that found that 85 per cent of large dailies, and half of smaller ones, across the US have axed staff in the past three years. "Where financial markets see fat to be trimmed, editors see loss of the capacity to pursue complex stories that take days, weeks or months to uncover," the article reflects. "Too often, the decision - based on expedience and expenditure - to publish what is popular or entertaining trumps what is necessary."
The article quotes the deep concerns of the veteran American journalist and commentator Bill Moyers for a society with a less watchful, less engaged, less resourced media. Moyers has devoted much of his long career to contemplating the quality of democracy and its relationship with the quality of journalism. In an interview last year he spelt out his concerns in terms that resonate like the beating drum through a Kinshasa night: the deafening preoccupation of one cloistered reality obliterating the message of a broader truth.
Reflecting on the dumbing down of US media as financial - and, he argues, political - pressures reduce critical news content, he recalls how "just the other day the major morning broadcast devoted long segments to analysing why Britney Spears shaved her head, and the death of Anna Nicole Smith got more attention than the Americans or Iraqis killed in Baghdad that week". Shades of Angelina and Angola. "The next time you're at a newsstand, look at the celebrities staring back at you. In-depth coverage on anything, let alone the bleak facts of power and powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people, is as scarce as sex, violence and voyeurism are pervasive."
..
Moyers believes that the dominant institutions of the American press are no longer the guardians of democracy, and instead keep reality away from audiences and readers. "The news business is at war with journalism," he says.
Walking past the last cordon of guns, past the broken aircraft littering the tarmac of Kinshasa airport, I felt a knot of anxiety deep in my belly. Taking off on a short flight to a safe place, feeling the knot unravel, I wondered what it must be like to have that fear inhabit your gut for weeks or years - the reality of local journalists who question power or corruption in the Congo, or who file their stories for The Zimbabwean. I consider the people whom I have met who know the truth of how that feels, who understand the privilege of publishing and broadcasting their words, and they take my breath away.
Perhaps, as with democracy, we are doomed to the media we deserve. I am reminded again and again in Africa of the value of truth. After 25 years in newspapers it feels shameful to be surprised by journalism, by its power and its fragility.
An article from Australia on the value of journalism. I have to say - although I have not crystallised my views in the same way, modern news media presents this image to me - of tripe processed and served up at a constant 24 hour pace.
A slightly more comedic look, and ascerbic one is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQOfIPCgJH0
Or at least I think that's the right one, I can't view Youtube at the moment.