By Alpha Abu
A book titled Media Studies – Critical African and De-colonial Approaches which is a collection of articles contributed mostly by seasoned scholars with knowledge on Africa media was on Friday 22 January 2020 launched in Freetown by veteran Sierra Leonean media personality Dr. Ibrahim Seaga Shaw.
The event at the Sierra Library Board hall which attracted senior media scholars, practitioners and students also saw a review of Dr. Shaw’s written chapter ‘Critical Perspectives on African Journalism’.
Fourah Bay College Lecturer Dr. Isaac Massaquoi in giving his analytical opinion on the work by Dr. Shaw, said a perspective that is a shift from mainstream ideas would likely be attacked and described the article by Dr. Shaw as one that is ‘’firmly part of that growing body of scholarly work challenging the dominant narratives around what the role of the media ought to be in the democratic architecture of modern societies’’. Dr. Massaquoi said with the qualitative intellectual growth among media scholars over the last three decades there is now a groundswell of ideas being put forward as alternative narratives by which to understand what the media ought to be particularly in Africa.
He went to expound on Dr. Shaw’s argument that a form of journalism existed in Africa before the first colonial forces landed on the continent but that the Western Liberal Democratic model is theorized to create the impression Africa has just the replica of what obtains in the consolidated democracies of the West and that there exists nothing like African Journalism.
He also looked at Dr. Shaw’s convinction of an African journalism model, “grounded in African oral discourse, creativity, humanity and agency,” and which the writer backed up with the one-size-fits-all conception of the media’s role in democratic governance that doesn’t tell the complete story.
Dr. Massaquoi therefore stated that the media systems imported to Africa were initially meant to serve the colonial political structure but would eventually become a hub from which Africans fought for and achieved independence.
On the value systems in journalism with emphasis on objectivity that Dr. Shaw highlighted in his chapter, Dr. Massaquoi stated: “The point must be made that even in this period, according to Shaw postmodern journalistic constructs like Objectivity and detachment were defied by Africa journalists in favor of a “discursive-commentary style which is a hallmark of our postmodernist era. The key take away from this argument is “while the modern journalist believes in the separation between fact and opinion or interpretation of that fact, the postmodern journalist prefers the rendition or interrogation of that fact from multiple perspectives.”
Dr. Shaw told Politico that part of his focus was to explain how the African journalism model tends to lean more toward honesty whereas the western liberal democracy is more the conventional form of journalism
He said it was in 2009 he published an article called ‘towards an African Journalism Model: a critical historical perspective’, which according to him was very popular and still being widely quoted in scholarly literature. The authors of the book, he said , approached him to upgrade the article and give it a new angle that resulted in him writing the chapter contained in the book that was launched.
Fourah Bay College and the Sierra Leone Library Board each received a copy of the book.
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