Input at the Agenda-Setting Conference: Mass Media and Public Opinion, Bonn

Imbalances in news flows do also impact on how the world is profiled by developing countries themselves, though the picture is better.

Some examples

To move from the general to the particular, using some South African experience to illustrate ways this problem can impact.

At the outset let it be said that the problems are not all imported and the solutions are entirely external. Nor is this a generalized criticism of foreign media, which play a critical role in taking our story to the peoples of the world. The issue is one of assumptions and conditions that operate as constraints on telling the story in a way that adequately and fully reflects the reality.

Persistent paradigms

As the conference theme is Mass Media and Public Opinion, aspects of reporting on the recent South African general election provide appropriate illustration.

In the run up to the election media commentators routinely spoke - as they had been doing for some years - of growing dissatisfaction that would lead to a reduced majority for the ruling party. When such predictions were confounded by increased support across all sectors of society, in an election that was evidently free and fair, there was no sign of reflection on the dissonance between media assessment of reality and that of the electorate. Rather, many reports - most markedly in international media - were that: despite this alleged dissatisfaction, the electorate had given increased support to the party that had been in government. To explain what from the point of view of this analysis was irrational behaviour by voters, it was suggested that they voted on the basis not of their interests but their "identity" or in some analyses, their race.

At play is a framework of assumptions that has been one of the greatest challenges in communicating the South African story of the first decade of freedom. It was nurtured in decades of intense conflict and an expectation of racial conflagration, and combined with the long-standing prejudice that the black majority was not capable of democratic governance - a variant of "Afro-pessimism".

When, ten years ago, such expectations were confounded by a peaceful transition, the dominant media explanation was not in terms of strategic decisions of the contending forces and their supporters judging that such a conflagration was in no-one's interest, but in terms of a "miracle". So the paradigm survived and with it the expectation that a black government was bound to fail sooner or later and do wrong at every turn

Such paradigms are necessary to interpret and explain events. The point is the negativity of those evoked with reference to Africa and their resistance to contrary evidence, perhaps especially the greater the distance from events.

So even though South Africa enjoys unparalleled stability the persistence of such an outlook puts in the minds of those who share it, a permanent question mark on sustainability of this stability. When such a mindset shapes the image of a developing country in media discourse, it impacts on the possibilities of partnership for development.

Event and conflict-driven reporting

In the context of such a mindset - and news agendas that flow from it - every incident in the everyday workings of a society effecting a complex transition has the potential to herald the expected unraveling and to confirm the expected failure.

Thus demonstrations in a residential area over housing problems are immediately declared as symptomatic of growing national dissatisfaction, with no need to investigate the political dynamics of a particular community. In similar fashion, particular racial incidents or crimes are seen as confirmation of endemic problems rather than matters with particular historical or social explanations that are being tackled in national programmes that are making progress.

With regard to HIV and AIDS, an issue that came to play a large part in the country's image, it was notable that while the decision to proceed with an ambitious comprehensive care and treatment plan effectively saw the end of a highly polarized chapter in domestic media discourse, foreign media perceptions have been slower to change.

National interests

Another familiar aspect is alignment of news agendas with national interests of the countries dominant in news flows - interests in terms both of what the public is interested in and of national objectives pursued as a matter of policy.

Incidents in a developing country involving nationals from a European country, for example, are likely to assume high profile in European media with disproportionate impact on shaping a country image.

Imbalances in news flows also give added weight to material from outside, facilitating the impact on domestic news agendas of stories that could only have been deliberately started by foreign agencies with the objective of inducing shifts in policy.

Reconstructing Country-Images

Such examples are only indicative, but the underlying problem is, as noted, well researched. It is not restricted to reporting on developing countries by other countries. However imbalances in news flow, distance from events and engagement of national interests do promote the persistence of inadequate frameworks of interpretation. The changing of negative country-images laid down over time becomes all the more difficult.

Developing countries are not passive before this challenge, and have engaged in a variety of measure to address the situation.

Some five years South Africa for example researched foreign perceptions of our country, especially in areas with the strongest economic relations. This confirmed a "perceptions deficit", a gap between the reality of a country undergoing reconstruction and development - and an image strong in negativity. Starting from the building of national consensus on how to position the country internationally, a long-term campaign is now making itself felt abroad. Part of what it must contend with are precisely imbalances in global media discourse, and their effects on news agendas and persistent stereotypes.

There has been significant improvement in media coverage especially in the recent period. A communication campaign around the tenth anniversary of freedom shifted media focus from daily problem areas to the country's achievements over a decade. Coupled with good news that could not be ignored - a successful third democratic election; sustained and accelerating economic growth in an economy that had been in crisis a decade before - it helped bring further improvement in international coverage.

For the continent as a whole there are also some signs that progress, including with respect to the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), Africa's plan for development in partnership with the industrialised countries, is beginning to register in coverage of the continent.

There have also been several initiatives to address the imbalances in news flows and promote the generation of African content from Africa, so that Africa can tell its own story from an African perspective.

Partnership for agenda-setting for development

These are positive consequences of African efforts to close perceptions gaps. But experience and analysis remind us of the constraints.

Substantial and lasting changes in news agendas require mutual effort. The impact of the measures by developing countries will be much greater if the environment is also addressed from the other side.

Apart from infrastructural aspects of news flow there is need to promote a more objective and balanced news agenda for development. This is no small challenge but it would be promoted by the kind of self-critical reflection that can occur only with the help of the community that is represented here at this conference.

And so, encouraged by the issues at stake, the conclusion of this intervention is a challenge. The commitment of industrialized nations to Nepad is based on an understanding that developing and industrialised countries have a common interest in the global peace and security which is dependent on Africa and the South lifting themselves from underdevelopment and poverty.

It is surely also in the interests of the global media and communications community that information and communications equity should be achieved. The North cannot have a well-informed public that is provided limited and distorted information about the rest of the world with whose destiny their own is bound.

The G8 summit next year is expected to have Africa's development at the centre of its agenda.

Should the next Agenda Setting Conference not address the issues raised as a core theme?

Tony Trew
Deputy CEO, Government Communications (GCIS)

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