Essay Submitted for “ Journalism and Society: Cultural Contexts and African Media” course.
Economy is defined in the sense of a financial system: “the production and consumption of goods and services of a community regarded as a whole.” (The wholeness/geographic expanse of such a community is debatable and reflexive, but for now, it will be loose and theoretical.) This production and consumption, as it refers to the media houses, can relate to the demand for information that audiences of the society seek. This can range from radio services, public relation press releases, news agencies, or entertainment venues.
In another manner, too, the realm of advertising, in particular, reinforces the desire to produce and purchase goods and services. It makes the public aware of what is offered, and who offers it. In many cases, much like the arrangement of products in a grocery store (the company paying for more advertising, displaying its product at eye level on the shelf), the advertising agencies dictate what products of the economy are in the public’s immediate realm of consciousness.
In a brief aside, the aforementioned power of advertising, in itself, has a large impact on the media. Advertising, especially in the case of radio, newspaper, and television, runs the industry. It fuels the private sector and provides the necessary means to keep the business funded. Advertising dollars are essential to the lifeblood of that particular media.
Therefore, it cannot be ignored that, in the last few decades, the number of publicly owned stations and outlets are dwindling, and the space and time of advertisements is on the rise. Fifteen or so minutes per hour of content is reserved for sponsoring advertisements. This calls into question the independence of the media. Naturally, and from the economic standpoint, the media is just another business. And like all businesses, it needs money. But is the media not unique in that it caters to the public?
Whether by autonomy or by collective interest, the media systems still are affected by the audience that engages in it. But due to the content fed by, and at times, controlled by, advertising, that audience may be limited in the degree of potential participation. Publics rely on the media, and therefore advertising to be able to have their media; the media relies on the public interest, and the advertisers that fund them; the advertisers rely on the media to relay their messages, and public society to engage in those messages. The strings are now intertwining.
This web also calls for the gauging of the media’s own agenda. (That is if it is safe to assume that, in this economic world, no system can be totally unbiased or independent.) Where does the media draw the line? At what point does it sacrifice advertising dollars and potential regulation/influence of content, in order to stand by their own, personal mission statement to the general public? In democracies especially, when the government does not have legal control of the media systems, this question of ethics can be a hard one.
The deeply developed patterns of ownership only further the possibility of a quick solution. In larger, more economically stable countries like the US or in Europe, the changing patterns of ownership, increasing its concentration into a finite number of hands, makes the power more central and the economic dependency greater. For instance, put into place are the practices of conglomeritization and integration, both vertical and horizontal. This centralization and localization of media power has been the result of economic efficiency and productivity. They increase a company’s breadth or domain in one industry, from top to bottom (vertical), or from associations across relevant other industries (horizontal), to decrease costs. Like all businesses, time equals money, the media, in today’s economy today, is feeling the pressure to find sustainable profits.
While this does create a more informed, and less hodge-podge system of information processing on behalf of the public, the fear of homogenization and limited accessibility of information has been criticized. Due to the efficiency of synergy, media pluralism and diversity of thought, semantic, informatics, and culture may be at peril. Such fears are only multiplied when one considers the effect globalization, oligopolies, and censorship could potentially, or are already, playing on the media.
Africa is unique in the way that many of its daughter nations are on the cusp of such democratization. They are developing, and in that have the emergent power to learn from the systems of other democracies, and the way in which their media houses have engaged in the economy.
Admittedly, the continent may find it difficult to separate itself from its colonial rhetoric of its past, wherein the superseding powers propagated a mentality of strict censorship and control. Public service, therefore, was sacrificed for centralization and efficiency due to limited resources. This has created a subconscious mentality in most African states, ignoring and devaluing individual and community public interests—yet another way in which the economy politic has affected the media system.
But this does not have to remain the case. African nations, like Ghana, for instance, are on the rise and increasing in their democratic stability. This in turn, can also correlate to a greater economic stability, too. Therefore, it can be mentioned that, as stated by analyst Francis Nyamnjoh, “democracy is both an individual and a group right and that the media can only provide for genuine pluralism and diversity by recongising and creating space for this reality,” (Media Pluralism & Diversity, 135). In my internship at XYZ* news station, for instance, I have experienced both sides of the emergent postcolonial ethos. News is very advertiser-geared. XYZ sponsors the Miss Ghana pageant, so the story concerning the contestants selling phones on the streets took precedence over one on overfilled schools. But that must occur everywhere. As previously stated, it is the economies of scale at power.
But it is the responsibility of the public’s individual, as well as the media agencies themselves, to demand a separation from this monetary-only mindset. If the public demands more quality, diversified content, they will receive it, as per the order of democratic law. In economic terms, the ratings will fall, the advertisers and company sponsors will lose their audience and their business, and thus must reassess the public opinion and tailor the needs and content to the rejuvenated target audience. It is like a set up and fall down, domino effect, in the forward and reverse, continuously.
Conclusively, in economies that are young and yet developing, the need for positive media geared not toward the money wallets, but toward community interest is key. But the media does not function in a vacuum, nor does it function in a utopian society. One must be conscious of the effects of the economy as well as the media’s actions, and how they relate to society as a whole. After all, while they all are interconnected, it is the public and the society to which both the economy and the media ultimately serve.
—Y. Ogale, 26 Oct. 2010
*name has been changed to protect privacy.
