Have Ethics,
Will Travel - The Glocalization of Media Ethics from an African
Perspective
By Herman
Wasserman Associate Professor of Journalism,
University of Stellenbosch, South Africa September 14, 2006 Can media ethics travel?
Can media ethical codes and frameworks developed in North America
and Europe, be applicable in other contexts, such as Africa?
How, for instance, does the orthodox liberal-democratic role
of the media as a critical ‘Fourth Estate’ translate
to South Africa, where a board member of the public broadcaster
recently declared that its journalists should be “guide
dogs” rather than ”attack dogs or lapdogs,”
and that the notion of journalistic objectivity is ”outdated”?
Should South African journalists interpret the remarks made
by their president, Thabo Mbeki, reminding them that they were,
”Africans before they became journalists,” as a
warning to tone down criticism of the post-apartheid government?
In other African countries similar tensions exist between the
ethical norms that journalists absorb in scholarly literature
or training, and the ones they adhere to in their lived reality.
In Cameroon, for example, it is common practice for journalists
to receive ‘gombo’ -- various forms of kickbacks
or rewards for favourable news reports -- as Lilian Ndangam
has shown in her research. This practice would surely be condemned
from a Western, liberal point of view, but when seen in the
context of severe economic hardships in Cameroon, Ndangam notes
that accepting gombo might be seen rather in terms of a coping
mechanism for survival than a wilful breach of ethics.
Also consider the situation in Zimbabwe, where the Mugabe government
has clamped down severely on the private media, and journalists
and editors are routinely harassed and treated harshly should
they dare criticise the government. Does it make sense to preach
the gospel of watchdog journalism and press vigilance in such
a context, or should other ways be found to formulate ethical
ideals for journalists that can realistically be achieved in
such an environment?
One of the burning issues in media ethics scholarship today
is whether one could arrive at a global journalism ethics. In
an era where the media industry has mushroomed all over the
world, where geographical, cultural and even temporal boundaries
seem to have blurred, the need has arisen for the formulation
of a journalism ethics that would be similarly global in its
reach. However, the above picture of the everyday realities
of journalists in Africa brings us to realise that Western theories
cannot be applied unproblematically to African contexts -- although
this is often what is being done in media training programmes,
media textbooks and international media watchdog organizations.
Because such impositions of media ethical theories and concepts
do take place, African journalists find themselves negotiating
contradictions and tensions between what they have been taught
to do, and what they have to do to cope in their specific circumstances.
So what happens to media ethical theories if they cannot be
globalized willy-nilly?
They get "glocalized".
The term "glocalization", used by scholars such as
R. Robertson, M. M. Kraidy, J. Tomlinson and T.W. Luke, refers
to the multidirectionality of the globalization process. Globalization
does not mean that Western cultural products, ideas and values
merely sweep over the rest of the world, obliterating all difference
in its way. While the power differentials of the process still
have to be taken into account, the term ‘glocalization’
aims to capture something of the push-and-pull of globalization,
where the influx of global culture is met with a local resistance
and counter-flow. The result is often a hybrid between the global
and the local. Seen this way, the global and the local are not
opposites, but mutually constitutive, interconnected forces.
The effects of media globalization in non-Western countries
have contributed to shifts in media ownership, content, and
structures, but it has also exerted influence on the level of
professional ideologies, ethical frameworks and practices of
media workers. As a result, journalism ethics has become a mix
of the global and local.
Let’s take South Africa as an example. The demise of apartheid
opened the country to the influx of global capital, such us
the Irish media giant Independent. Because the South African
media now have to compete with international media, and (for
instance in the case of Independent) now form part of global,
multinational media firms, they have to seek ways to be profitable
in global economic terms, in order to keep their overseas owners
happy. To do so, they have adopted an increasingly commercial
ethos in the post-apartheid media. That commercialization, however,
is often bemoaned as resulting in the ‘dumbing down’
or ‘sensationalizing’ of news.
Preliminary surveys of mainstream journalists seem to demonstrate
an acute awareness of what is seen as ‘universal’
or ‘global’ ethical standards and news values, and
the current ethical codes have largely been modeled on international
ones like those of the American Society of Professional Journalists
and the British Broadcasting Corporation. Yet these codes have
proved to be inadequate to articulate the need for the post-apartheid
media to fulfil the demands set by different sectors of society.
It can be argued that the roles and responsibilities of the
media in a country that has recently emerged from decades of
systematic racial oppression cannot be the same as in countries
where formal democracy has been long established. Similarly,
questions are asked about whether journalists should still adhere
to treasured Western media ethical values such as ‘neutrality’
and ‘balance’ when faced with severe poverty, inequality
and an HIV/Aids pandemic. Such challenges, critics say, demand
another form of involvement by journalists.
A counter-reaction to the orthodox media ethical frameworks
and professional codes inherited from the West came in the form
of a renewed appeal to the media to display a loyalty to the
local, to the community, to ‘African values’. In
line with President Mbeki’s vision for an ‘African
Renaissance’, appeals have been made to the South African
media to be more strongly oriented towards the African continent,
and for journalists to report ‘as Africans’, with
a pan-African mindset.
This Africanist perspective underlaid the founding of the African
Editor’s Forum (TAEF) in 2003, which deliberately reinforces
the philosophy and goals of the New Partnership for African
Development (NEPAD) and the African Union. This forum represents
a journalistic counter-discourse to the homogenizing influences
of Western ethical norms. The forum emphasizes the need for
African media to play a role in promoting African identities,
issues, and perspectives in the face of unequal globalisation
of communication. During the conference where the TAEF was established,
participants emphasised ‘the importance that journalists
tell the African story from African perspectives’ and
that ‘African editors give prominence to publishing African
issues’. Editors from all over Africa decided to explore
Africa-specific ethical values and respond to contextual needs.
Editors noted key challenges for journalists in the African
continent, such as freedom of speech in the face of intimidation
and harassment. They proposed drawing of ‘an African media
charter and/or a code of ethics’ (TAEF, 2003), partly
as a corrective to the prevailing Western ethical values underpinning
many of the discussions about journalism ethics.
That this process of indigenisation occurs simultaneously with
the appropriation of Western-based ethical codes and mimicking
of ethical practice in metropolitan countries can be seen as
indicative of the paradoxical glocalization of journalism ethics
in South Africa. This process is not tantamount to a dualism
or dichotomy between the global and the local. Instead it should
be understood as two moments in the same process of glocalisation,
in which the global is rearticulated in the local context, and
local responses are intertwined with global influences. In such
a context, the local and the global cannot easily be separated,
but give rise to specific, contextualised journalistic ethics
and practices.
Critics (such as Pieter Fourie and Keyan Tomaselli) have warned
against a normative media framework based on indigenous cultural
values alone, such as the African communitarian idea of ‘ubuntu’.
They fear that such an approach to media ethics may lead to
an essentialist view of culture and identity, thereby excluding
journalists who do not conform to certain ethnic characteristics,
or condemn certain statements that do not comply with a specific
view of ‘Africanness’, resulting in the curbing
of freedom of speech. Such criticism is valid if the glocalization
of media ethics is taken to mean the crude rejection by African
journalists and scholars of all Western values and ideas. But
such criticism may also lose from sight the hybridity of ethical
frameworks that come about as a result of the contradictions,
tensions and contestations that characterize the encounter between
the local and the global.
Our original question was: Can media ethical frameworks travel?
An investigation of African media contexts suggests that the
answer is yes, they can -- but they do not return from the journey
unchanged.
HERMAN WASSERMAN is an Associate Professor in the Department
of Journalism, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He
has worked previously as a print journalist in Cape Town. His
research interests relate to the role of the media in post-apartheid
South African society, including the use of the new media technologies
for social change, the media’s construction of identity,
and media ethics. During the Fall 2006 semester, he is a visiting
Fulbright Scholar at the University of Indiana (Bloomington),
where he is working on a project pertaining to a postcolonial
approach to normative frameworks in South Africa. He can be
contacted at hwasser@sun.ac.za
