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June 28, 2006
History Lesson
Ghana has a pretty long and storied press history, which in turn says something, I think, about the country's development. Its first newspaper showed up in 1822. While the colonial government published that one, native papers, many arguing for nationalist causes, generated much of the next century of press history. 1885 brought in the first "women's column," and the first daily paper showed up in 1931. (That was the first time a women's column was actually written by a woman.)
As they dodged jail, deportation and sedition laws, several of the key figures in Ghanaian independence founded papers that became a crucial part of the fight for freedom. After independence, the large independent Daily Graphic sold out to the state. (It remains Ghana's highest circulation paper today.) The move reflected the government's interest in controlling the press as well as the journalists' pre-existing interest in supporting the new regime. That attitude did not last.
Fast forward to the early 1990s, when loosened press freedom laws allowed newspapers to serve as the voice of the opposition party. The papers were read and passed along. Radio stations took up the idea of reading newspaper stories on the air and then discussing them. Because radio reaches 90 percent of the population here, this practice brought an educated political debate to the masses.
Here's comparison No. 1: In Mozambique, where I traveled last year, newspapers seemed to be produced by elites and for elites, broadly speaking. The general population, particularly anywhere outside of major cities, was not much up on national news. In my uneducated opinion, the fact that Ghana's papers could have an effect on political debate, popular knowledge and public opinion reflects a broader level of education and infrastructure. Meanwhile, Mozambique is a much larger, poorer country whose national language, Portuguese, is much less widespread.
In both places, the government-owned media outlets are still the biggest and best. The only wire service in these countries is state-owned. The constitutions guarantee press freedoms, but a council exists to mediate between government and the institutions it owns. Thus the power of an independent press is to some degree held in the hands of the state.
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at June 28, 2006 01:11 PM