Jornal de Comunicação de Massa e Jornalismo

Media Ownership and Control Versus Press Freedom in a Democratic Africa

Abstract

Ali A

The deregulation of the broadcast industry in Africa has helped politicians to advance their ambitions at the expense of the ethics of the profession of journalism. In Nigeria, there are prevalent cases of the state media being used by government to run political campaigns of only the political parties of the ruling class. This is the same story where private media organizations are owned by chieftains of some political parties in the country. Such media (both print and electronic) are used as propaganda machineries by these party chieftains and also used as media for carrying out negative reports about the party in power. Many African countries have similar situations. This paper looks at how the ownership of media organizations across the continent has interfered with the standards of professionalism in journalism. The paper will use the social responsibility theory and the libertarian theory to serve as theoretical framework. The paper will dwell more on the role of ownership in the media coverage of some African countries from 2011 to 2012 and try to make comparison with what is obtainable in the United Kingdom and the United States of America.