How Western Media Cover Africa
“After the briefing, some reporters gazed at the wall and the drapes and the skies outside the window of the briefing room and saw nothing there to write home about. Honest reporters sent home messages saying: “Dear Editor, nothing happened today and good night.” The reporter did.”
No news, to some, is good news. To others, no news is bad news. The way too fill the gap, judging from an incident in Monrovia, Liberia, where the Organization of African Unity was holding its summit, is to manufacture a story. If you don’t agree, ask a bony and tiny white guy who was covering the OAU conference for the Reuters News Agency, and you will get an idea how Western journalists can use their imagination for the truth. This is how it happened. One of the days in Monrovia, for journalists covering the OAU summit, was dry. Peter Onu, the Nigerian who was the Assistant Secretary-General of the organization, didn’t help the matter a bit. Mr. Onu was the one with the soothing voice who had the responsibility for meeting the press twice a day, once in the afternoon and again around 9 at night to tell the more than 60 journalists who crowded into the briefing room about debates behind the closed doors of the Ministerial Council’s conferences.
As usual, Mr. Onu came into the room, sat at a table at the head of the room, whirled around on the chair and tested the microphones before telling the reporters what he wanted them to think were the matters discussed behind closed doors. Believe it, Mr. Onu was excellent for the job. A perfect public relations practitioner, he was adept at putting gloss over rough edges. So that afternoon, after talking about Afro-Arab co-operation, a dull affair if ever existed, the reporters knew they were in for a dry day.
After Mr. Onu had left the room, some reporters gaze at the wall and the drapes and the skies outside the window of the briefing room and saw nothing there to write home about. Those of the journalists who were honest sent home messages saying: “Dear Editor, nothing happened today and good night.” This reporter did. It was in the process of sending home the message that he saw the copy of a story the Reuters correspondent sent to London for dissemination to the world at large. Something to this effect, he wrote: “African ministers meeting here in Monrovia were thrown into disarray today when news of escalated fighting in the Spanish Sahara reached Monrovia. The minister were visibly embarrassed that the Polisario forces would choose to delicate time to the OAU 16th summit to intensify their attack on Moroccan forces who had been engaging the guerrilla in a war to control the mineral-rich territory.” The Reuters’ reporter found time to add that the Polisario folks were supported by Algeria, and so on. He also found time to track down the Mauritanian and Moroccan foreign ministers. With these quotes from Liberia in West Africa, thousands of subscribers to the Reuters services would spread the tiny man’s lies. A reporter thought he had missed something really big. He ran to one of the Nigerian delegates attending the Ministerial Conference with Commissioner of External Affairs, Major-General Henry Adefope, to ask about the confusion caused by the so-called escalation of the Saharan conflict. The gentleman looked aghast and asked what the hell the reporter was getting at. The reporter asked if he didn’t hear of the embarrassment to the foreign minister of the news of the increased fighting in Sahara? The diplomat laughed out loud at this point. He asked the source of the story and he was told that it was a report written by the wiry Reuters correspondent. The then laughed out again, said a few other unprinted, and then left, shaking his head.
What makes the story not that funny was the fact that other Western correspondents who arrived late at the conference borrowed the teletype copies of the Reuters reporter to appraise themselves of events that took place at the conference before their arrival. And for that day, they would read about the embarrassments caused by the escalated fighting in the Sahara, and they would jot it down. Doing a round up, they might include the note in a paragraph, and that would be read by millions all over the world, and another piece of Western fabrication would become a fact.
©Daily Times, July 18, 1979
(Pp.30-31)
