Western Media

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Recommended: How negative stereotypes effect African Continent

Africa is one of the richest continents in terms of resources and human population nonetheless; it is the poorest and least developed continent. A significant number of the population in the west are ignorant about Africa and have a negative attitude towards Africa, ‘Most of them have certain images of Africa that they hold to be true or real’, all these images are acquired though what they receive as news in the western media (Michira,2002). Often words used to describe Africa in the west include the following: dark, jungle, savage, underdeveloped, third world, hunger, disease, famine, drought, lack of history and culture. This essay will analyse the news reports about Africa with the help of The independent and The guardian newspapers; the reports will be from a one week period from 24th August 2010 to 30th August 2010. This essay will argue that western media reporting on Africa converges entirely on unfavourable views and ignores the positives. It will also show that news reports are negative, because it can be argued that western media audiences always expect dismal news from Africa, therefore; the news networks are merely supplying according to the demand.

Western media reporting focuses excessively on misery, this point of view is supported by (Howden, 2010) news article in The Independent newspaper; in which he portrays a detrimental view of the South African government by comparing it to the past regime of the apartheid era. The report is inaccurate to suggest that the government of South Africa is going backwards by denying freedom of speech and in addition, accuses the government of being corrupt and ineffective. This is a misguided view ,due to the fact that South Africa is one of the best examples of development that...

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...ight to report on Africa’s problems, however it should be observed that it tends to be unbalanced and most of the time focused on the negative aspects and in the end ignoring the breakthrough and improvements that are witnessed everyday on the African continent. Additionally, (Chavis, 1998) adds that news reports about African art, African music, African movies and documentaries are never covered or are simply ignored by western news media.

In conclusion, with the help of The independent and The guardian newspapers; it can therefore be argued that western news reports about Africa are mostly negative and ever focused on poverty, misery and violence in particular .The type of coverage that is given to Africa is unbalanced and demonstrates a degrading image that Africa stills holds in the western societies today.

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