He stressed he was not advocating “sunshine” journalism but was calling on African journalists to tell the story of the continent themselves – the good, the bad and the ugly.
In a presentation aimed at showing editors that it was not for western journalists to report Africa's news, but for Africans to do it themselves, he said it was time to change the “d” content (for disaster, despair and dependency) to the “d” for development.
“The “1984/5 Ethiopian famine images fixed the world view of Africa as a place of despair and dependency but, though such scenes still exist, as a norm they are increasingly outdated,” he said. “Things have changed significantly in the intervening 20 years, both in Africa and in the wider world.”
If Africans thought they had received a bad deal in the past, there was worse ahead. With the focus increasingly on “neighbourhood”, the news media in the west was likely to concentrate more on its immediate environment than on Africa.
African blamed the bad press on racism but bad governance was more at fault. “African journalists are learning that we cannot make good news out of bad practice,” he said. There was a view that the western media was to blame for the bad news but the fact was that poverty in sub-Saharan African remained at 40%. Zimbabwe's inflation rate changed almost by the minute and stood at round 3700%.
Readership had dropped by 10% with only one journalist to every 35000 people there. The figure for Kenya stood at one journalist per 10 000 of the population. Nigeria had a lot of newspapers but there were 192 radio stations in the Congo, and only one in Nigeria.
He urged journalists to check what was new and to write about that. If they did so, the world would soon follow. It was time to stop complaining and get on with the job themselves.
“Tell the Africans what is new. Tell them the interesting, the ugly and the uplifting. It is time to move from whinge to win-win” he said.
Berger was supported by Azubuike Ishiekwene, executive director of Punch, Nigeria, who told the editors that if Africa wanted to be depicted more positively, African journalists should take up the fight themselves.
Geoffrey Nyarota of Zimbabwe, former Golden Pen award winner, pointed out that most of the coverage in Africa was done by foreign correspondents based in Johannesburg. Predictably the third paragraph of their articles started with “Diplomatic sources said...”
Yet, he asked, how could diplomatic sources know what was being happening in Mugabe's government? “It is no fault of the western media that their coverage is limited to what can be achieved from Johannesburg. Zimbabwe has banned foreign correspondents and I, too, produce the Zimbabwe Times online from the US,” he said.
Often there was only one correspondent to cover the whole of Africa. Mathatha Tsedu, editor of the large-selling Johannesburg-based City Press, who chaired the meeting, closed the discussion saying it was a “tragedy” that two years after editors had decided to “stop moaning and start planning”, African journalists had gravitated to a pre-set form by not to find fault with themselves but were once again lambasting western coverage.
“We have a responsibility to do this thing for ourselves,” he said.
A commission of enquiry has called on independent media institutions, public service broadcasters, civil society and the private sector, with support from governments, to form a consortium of partners, in Africa and outside, to provide funds and expertise to create an African media development facility.
