With Coverage of Guinea Coup, US News Media Dumb Down the News

I’ve writ­ten about US news media cov­er­age of the African con­ti­nent over the course of many years. In my analy­sis of the cov­er­age seen, the empha­sis con­tin­ues to be on what’s wrong with the con­ti­nent, with lit­tle effort made to report progress made over many decades of African social, eco­nom­ic, and demo­c­ra­t­ic change. The coverage…

Covid-19 Spared Africa — A Reality American Media Won’t Admit

In jour­nal­ism, there is such a thing as agen­­da-set­t­ing – how the mass media — news­pa­pers, radio, and TV, and the plu­ral­i­ty of online chan­nels — pri­or­i­tize the news for pub­li­ca­tion. The idea that some news sto­ries would take prece­dence over oth­ers gained cre­dence with thought lead­ers, Maxwell McCombs and Don­ald Shaw, dur­ing the 1968…

As George Floyd Protests Rock U.S., Africans Vent about Inequality

On Amer­i­can TV, CNN’s Bri­an­na Keil­er summed up, bet­ter than any­one, what is tak­ing place in the Unit­ed States fol­low­ing the May 25 killing of George Floyd. You are watch­ing America’s reck­on­ing, the anchor of CNN’s mid-day News­room pro­gram nar­rat­ed. She went to list the many unprece­dent­ed changes that have occurred, so quick­ly, some of…

Plot to Oust WHO Chief, Tedros Ghebreyesus

When Tedros Adhanon Ghe­breye­sus ascend­ed to the top of lead­er­ship at the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) in 2017, my col­league, Raevyn Goates wrote about it at Africa Agen­da. Ghe­breye­sus won the vote in 2017 by 63 %, which was an over­whelm­ing 133 votes out of 185 votes cast. He was the first direc­­tor-gen­er­al of the…

Trump’s Latest Immigration Ban Targets the African Continent — Again

  On April 22, U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed, as he promised, an exec­u­tive order ban­ning immi­gra­tion into Amer­i­ca for 60 days. At the core of the move is the sus­pen­sion of the issuance of any new green cards to immi­grants into Amer­i­ca. This lat­est move comes as the Unit­ed States is in the midst…

No Rest for the Weary in Zimbabwe

In yet anoth­er set­back to bring­ing last­ing peace to Zim­bab­we, Reuters News Ser­vice report­ed Mon­day that there is a dead­lock in nego­ti­a­tions between the rul­ing ZANU PF par­ty and the oppo­si­tion Move­ment for Demo­c­ra­t­ic Change(MDC) on the terms of imple­men­ta­tion of the Sep­tem­ber 2008 pow­er-shar­ing agree­ment. Both sides are cur­rent­ly at a region­al sum­mit to…