Why Zambian media is failing to address class contradictions
By Staff Reporter
The media divide in Zambia has grown beyond expectation within a tiny span due to numerous interests in our reportage as echoed in all leading public and private media organisations.
This development has not spared the online media too as they have been the vilest malefactors of almost breaking every rule in journalism to the advantage of their paymasters whether in the form of politicians or capitalists.
The online media has also turned their practice into “guerrilla journalism” due to factors ranging from unbelievable propensity to defame innocent citizens without taking full responsibility to undisclosed physical addresses making it almost impossible to put face to people running these forms of media. However, it is noted that some online media outfits otherwise better known as social media have played a significant role in exposing the entire bad governance culture one can think of in our times.
The challenge facing us today is that because the media has sold its soul to the highest bidder it can go to great length to insult, humiliate, defame and scream all sorts of fabricated lies just to appease some stupid paymasters.
This development has left an extensive media and information gap of issues that are not being covered by the media because of the self-cultivated and inflicted biased interests of which the public are able to scrutinize, evaluate and determine whose political or capitalistic interests the so-called journalists are peddling.
The bastardization, corporatization, partialization and highly politicization of news and information in Zambia by the media has relegated the issues affecting the working class and downtrodden of society to an afterthought that never existed in the first place.
This situation is not only eating up our media landscape by the way but the entire world. The end result has been loss of credibility to readers, listeners and viewers. This has now been compounded by the much debated “fake news” theories on most networks in the United States of America and the rest of the world as can be evidenced by the citation below.
“The major media-particularly, the elite media that set the agenda that others generally follow-are corporations “selling” privileged audiences to other businesses. It would hardly come as a surprise if the picture of the world they present were to reflect the perspectives and interests of the sellers, the buyers, and the product. Concentration of ownership of the media is high and increasing. Furthermore, those who occupy managerial positions in the media, or gain status within them as commentators, belong to the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations, and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as well. Journalists entering the system are unlikely to make their way unless they conform to these ideological pressures, generally by internalizing the values; it is not easy to say one thing and believe another, and those who fail to conform will tend to be weeded out by familiar mechanisms. — Noam Chomsky, “Necessary Illusions”
This citation should help people to begin to question the class interest of CNN, NBC, Fox News, BBC, ZNBC, SABC, ZBC, The Daily Nation, Muvi TV, Daimond TV among many others. Once the public understands the class interests of a particular media there will be an understanding of whose interest each media represents. This will help the public segment the media accordingly and know which one stands for their cause. This is important because it so annoying to buy a newspaper or listen to some television or radio station that does not reflect ones’ own class interest.
The except from Chomsky’s works has proven how major global media networks are owned by the same people/businesses; how they set the news agenda to propagate their own business interests which have been demystified as class interests. And without careful analysis the rest of the media pursue that set agenda, fight battles and wars that they should not have if only they understood the class interests, for instance President George Bush’s invasion of Iraqi.
Much of our media today operates on surreptitious and covert arrangements with the powers that be as well as movers and shakers of trade and industry due to a myriad of reasons which range from unimaginable inappropriate huge appetite for super-duper profits, adulterated political as well as capitalistic favours.
This trend has resulted in the media lying, propandizing, deceiving and Machiavellian reportage both in the mainstream and auxiliary media. The self-indulgent power mongers whether in government, opposition or corporate world have proved their grip on media kingpins that in turn manipulate the news in favour of their pay masters. Media moguls that have sold their souls have turned their media institutions into propagandist factories and have no interest in serving the poor or working class as there are no benefits to do so. Here lies your answer if you have ever wondered why journalists and people centered conversations are diminishing and paving way for bourgeoisies to set the agenda for the media.
Media organisations that owe their allegiance to bourgeoisies, capitalists and corrupt politicians will leave no stones unturned to defend those whose real interests they promote regardless of any social injustices, human rights abuses, corruption, nepotism, tribalism, ternderprenurialism, un-constitutionalism and several other isms that affect society negatively.
The media divide has also been worsened by the corporatization of the media. This is so real to the extent that PR companies and marketing agencies long ago realized that it is not difficult to get media coverage baised to their interests by offering freebies, holiday packages, cocktail parties and shockingly even just free rides in aristocratic cars to journalists. And when this happens who would expect such journalists beneficiaries to stand with the poor people whose water sources is getting polluted by the so called great mining conglomerates; who will stand for the working class whose buying power keeps dwindling every quarter of the year while the high cost of living keeps surging; which media will speak for the poor student whose parent is a civil servant but is made to pay whatever new fees to the University of Zambia; which media will consistently project issues affecting the people of Zambia Compound wherever it exists in this country; which media will tell the powers that be that the Turn Park – Mazabuka Road is an export earner for Zambia therefore needs urgent attention and not political rhetoric regardless of the political choices the people of Southern Province make?
The million dollar question the Zambian media needs to answer today is whether it can regain its credibility of prioritizing concerns and perspectives of important issues affecting the working class and poor communities. This country’s voices reflect a great diversity of aspirations, hopes, fears as well as dreams and the Zambian media has the duty and responsibility to originate news content reflecting independent news source diversities that support the propagation of citizen views in the various sectors of our nationhood.
The heavy polarization of the all manner of media in the country has brought us to a point where even debate is polarized simply because of narrow class interests of media provocateurs. The current media decadence clearly shows who the paymaster of each media is and this calls for media institutions to clearly set their objectives and purpose of existence than this nonsense of claiming independence and speaking for the voiceless when they are stuffing their pockets with blood money and ill-gotten wealth. Yes, what else should it be called when citizens are dying due to lack of medicines in clinics; workers cannot afford a decent livelihood; children are learning in some sheds of trees curtsey of God; Chinese roads are flowered by volcanoes we prettify as potholes barely a week after the President has graced a dazzling ceremony and the media which is the vanguard of the people cheers on.
There is no need to point out which media is this or that because people are able to un-package and position each institution and journalist where their mouth and stomachs are positioned. However, time has come to take an introspection and audit of the operations of the Zambian media landscape and take it back to the people.
