A number of events have recently taken place regarding Africa’s media, including the observation of what is dubbed “international day of the radio”, in commemoration of the launching of the radio as the first true medium of mass communication.
The world seems to be obsessed with the observation of many international days in honor of this or that cause, invention, disease or discovery.
The list of international days commemorating all kinds of decent or esoteric events or occasions is very long. Yet, some of these occasions, like international radio, are worth celebrating. Speaking of the radio, most ordinary Ethiopians are fond of remembering the times they spent listening to the radio, a magical box that was navigating in the air carrying to them precious news or entertaining programs for free.
Most Ethiopians of the older generation have their lives attached or influenced by this magic box. It impacted their everyday lives, bringing to them breaking news like the dethroning Emperor Haile Selassie, the declaration of wars, the explosion of revolutions and the triumph of Ethiopian athletes at historic sporting events, to mention but a few of the few historic milestones.
The radio may be a simple tool operating with low voltage electric power or batteries that were cheap in the old days.
The radios too were cheap to buy although relatively few families could own a radio set. the radio was kind of community tool for receiving vital information. It served all members of a villages or neighborhoods.
Children as well as adults were gathered at one spot whenever famous persons delivered speeches, when historic proclamations were announced or when New Year music concerts were aired over the radio.
According to recent data there are 44,000 radio stations and more than 5 billion people tuning to the radio every day. This is enough to show that the appeal of the radio is growing and adapting to the amazing technological changes of the last few decades.
Coming back to more recent developments, the news about land being secured for the construction of the headquarters of Global Television Network of Africa (GTNA). this is a Pan-African media house which is underformation and has secured 5,000 square meters of land in the capital Addis Ababa.
This was announced by CEO of the GTNA, Girum Chala, who is a correspondent for the Chinese Global Television Network CGTN who indicated that the company will build a state of the art headquarters for the soon upcoming media house that aims to portray the true economic, political, and social picture of Africa and its people for the global audience.
This is no doubt big news for all Africans who have been dreaming about Africa having its own independent global television network that will connect it with the rest of the world by presenting the true face of the continent. That will also liberate it from the old Western media stereotypes of Africa as being mostly a continent of wars, conflicts, famines and all the real or imaginary miseries Africans are suffering from.
The Western media has been portraying events in Africa with cynical disdain if not with indifference as a continent allegedly irrelevant in global affairs. Fortunately, things are changing these days and Africa too is changing in a positive direction although the old Western media stereotypes are still vigorously pursued.
The news of the formation of the GTNA is significant as the project is announced at a time when the global media corporations that are monopolized by multinational companies are working in symbiosis with powerful politicians and lobbyists in the corridors of power in Western countries.
These media are launching increasingly aggressive and ceaseless campaigns of blackmail, intimidation, fake news and thinly veiled defamations against Africans and their leaders.
At no time in the long history of the international media were these respected media houses engaged in professional malpractices of defamation, pessimism, fake news and hate-mongering against Africa as they are now.
Even during the time colonialism when the western media had a monopoly of the airwaves, reports about Africa and Africans were not as venomous, as vile and as vicious as they are right now.
Ethical journalism was invented at a time when journalists and their profession were respected not only by governments but also by the public. Journalism lived up to its prestige as the Fourth State, feared as well as respected by people in power.
Western journalists adhered to ethical journalism and worked fairly professionally in their reports of foreign events. It is sad to say that that kind of journalism in the West has been replaced by what we may call “gutter journalism”. The establishment of the GTNA is significant for another reason.
It is being launched at a time when Western neocolonial powers are waging a new attack against the people of Africa and African governments that do not subscribe to their hegemonic ambitions in the continent.
It seems that Washington and the West in general are nowadays determined to launch a new Cold War and turn Africa into their launching pad for global aggression against a number of countries who rejected their political diktat as well as their hegemonic ambitions.
Following its military reversal in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the Biden administration in Washington seems to be determined to regain its lost positions around the world and reclaim its eroded hegemonic power.
The contours of a new global alliance of forces for world control or domination are clearly emerging. Washington and the Western countries are allied to America’s global plan for dominance in the face of other rising claimants.
Western Europe is serving as an American strategic ally in the new diplomatic if not military conflicts. Washington’s presence in Ukraine is not apparently dictated by Kiev’s national interest but by the Western fear that the rise of Russia as a great power might be bound to reignite its old hegemonic instincts.
By the same token the Biden administration is promoting the TPLF, not to bring the neofascist group to power but because they think the group is the best bet for now to promote their hegemonic ambitions in the Horn of Africa. Washington is most scared by a potential Russian-Chinese military alliance as a real threat against America’s hegemonic plans.
The US might be able to take on Russia or China separately but the possibility of a Russian-Chinese combined economic and military might is a real nightmare. In between these great powers stand Africa, Asia and Latin America whose main objectives are modest and humble.
They are not out for global conquest and their modest ambitions include winning the fight against poverty, providing enough food for their populations, fighting pandemics and creating jobs to their growing youth populations, among others.
At this juncture Washington does not seem to care about these modest objectives of developing countries. It is looking at the world through the distorted prism of either your are part of the American problem or part of the American solution.
Developing countries are refraining from take stands for or against the great powers because their interests do not directly or always coincide with the interests of powerful countries. However, Western powers seem to be trying to force them into serving as their diplomatic or military outposts through intimidation, third party pressure or proxy war, threats of sanctions and withholding of aid money, to name but a few of their tactics.
What is both astonishing and shocking is not only the U-turn American foreign policy is actually taking, but also the connivance of Western media corporations in Washington’s drive to get back its lost prestige, influence and domination. Deep down, Washington wants to be the sole superpower dictating the terms of global engagements.
This is not possible because the world has much changed in the last decades and the bipolar world has given rise to the multi-polar one.
The future of the world does no more hinge on the ambitions, or secret plans of a handful of global powers. It also depends on the actions of the so-called developing countries whose interests are increasingly opposed to those of the great powers. No doubt then that the Western powers are mobilizing their media machineries of fake news to promote their new political agendas.
This is not because the Western media are not aware of what Washington and their European allies are after. It is because there is a strong symbiosis between the media and the powerful politicians in the Western world disguised as defense of national interests, namely the supremacy of the West over the rest of the world. America is an imperial power in sharp decline.
It is being overtaken by other aspirants. And it does not tolerate the emergence of a multi-polar world that would function in mutual interdependence instead of mutual aggression.
The emergence a powerful global television network in Africa may not be a welcome development among the tycoons of the global western media corporations who are not ready to tolerate any kind of competition coming from Africa.
They want to preserve their monopoly of the airwaves. They want Africa to continue buying their fakes news and act accordingly.
The emergence of an ethical, truthful, balanced or professional and credible media network in Africa might sound the death knell of the aggressive, monopolistic and cynical Western media establishments that are fast losing credibility and respect.
The fact that the Global Television Network for Africa will be establish in Addis Ababa has also a symbolic significance in the sense that Ethiopia is currently the country that is forced to suffer from Washington’s misguided attitude or foreign policy.
It is subjected to a proxy war, deprived of international financial assistance and development funds as well denied of its rights and privileges under AGOA which was given to African countries by previous US administrations.
Ethiopia is being treated unfairly by the Washington hawks, the pundits and their media simply because it refused to serve as a stooge of western hegemonic ambitions and chose to follow its own path in both domestic and foreign policy.
The GTNA is, therefore, expected to provide additional power so that African voices would be heard and African events reported to the world without bias or favor.
It would also add more weight to the other independent African media houses that are struggling to defend and promote Africa’s quest for economic development and political freedom in the face of aggressive global media imperialism.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The Ethiopian Herald 23 February 2022
