@sitholeexpress
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| Nqakula told panelists that positive government stories need to be published. |
The media is most people’s only window to places outside
South Africa and through television screens, radio and newspaper reports people
can be transported to countries across the African continent. But this picture
of Africa depends on how the journalist and the news organisation they work for
cover the rest of the continent. From their angle, people sitting in their
homes across South Africa would then formulate their own picture of other
regions in Africa.
Many would remember how the North African countries of
Libya, Egypt and Tunisia dominated the news in 2011 as people were revolting
against their governments. Libya’s was the most difficult as that country’s
president Muammar Ghaddafi was refusing to step down until the rebels started
hunting him down and eventually killed him. Nato also declared the airspace over Libya a no-fly zone
and then started shelling the country. That is the story of North Africa from
2011 many would remember. The dictators who led those countries are no longer
in power and as there are fewer protests, no shelling of the region and a bit
of calm, the stories from there have also stopped. There is also a huge
possibility that many who watched those conflicts would not know a North Africa
without conflict as they’ve never seen it through their window.
