Recent years have seen considerable growth in the media in Africa with increases in the number of newspapers and radio and television stations. At the same time there has been an increase in the number of arrests of journalists and broadcasters and various forms of censorship have been introduced. The essays in this volume examine press censorship, past and present, and bring a fresh perspective to the position of the mass media in the African continent.

What has media freedom entailed over the couple of centuries and successive governments of the geopolitical region that became South Africa since it was colonised by Westerners? And why can media freedom be described as both pillar and cornerstone of a democracy? It’s simple, as in the words of Nelson Mandela, first state president of a democratic South Africa: Press freedom is the “lifeblood of democracy”. This book tells the tale of the various states of press freedom, or unfreedom, from colonial times to today – from a British governor called a dictator and a despot, through apartheid’s “pigmentocracy”, or “sjambokracy”, where the rule of law “has been replaced by the rule of the whip”, up to the dawn of liberation, with media freedom entrenched in Article 16 of South Africa’s Bill of Rights. And why should all of this concern you? Because media freedom is not about the freedom of the media. It is about your freedom. As was formulated by an editor under apartheid: “If we don’t have a public sympathetic to a free press, not only will we not have a free press, we won’t have a democracy either.” Or, in the words of former Sowetan editor and SANEF chair, Mpumelelo Mhkabela: “Media freedom has nothing to do with the media, but with the freedom of citizens.” And that is why you should know that a free media is the only guarantee for your freedom. As we have seen, both under apartheid and also under a democratic dispensation, it is a matter of a luta continua. The struggle continues. But you, the public, are the guardian of those that guard democracy. Help ensure the rights of a free media, and thereby your democratic rights and a democratic South Africa.

The Quest for Press Freedom is a book about press development and freedom in Ethiopia, with a focus on the state media. It examines the building of a modern media institution over the last one hundred years of its existence, and the restrictions against its freedoms. The significance of this work lies in its originality and that it addresses these two issues across three distinct epochs: the monarchy era, the Marxist military regime, and the current ethnic federalist regime. The book examines the political and social situations in each of these periods, and analyzes the effects they had on the media. The book also provides examples of how journalists working for the government-run media have a strong desire to exercise their constitutional right to press freedom. In the final chapter, Reta offers recommendations for a more viable media system in Ethiopia.

An overview of the press and mass media in Africa today and their contribution to democratization

This book gives an overview of current debates surrounding press freedom in Africa in response to ongoing contestations between media and governments on the continent. Through case studies of individual African countries as well as international comparisons, a wide range of global contributors provide critical assessments of the state of press freedom on the continent and critical perspectives on the dominant discourses around freedom and democracy. Some fear an alarming slide towards a media-intolerant environment in South Africa, and the proposed Media Appeals Tribunal and the Protection of State Information Bill (POSIB) have met with strong criticism from journalism practitioners and educators. This book examines these and other recent developments seen to represent a threat to press freedom on the African continent. Contributors to the volume take a comparative look at the situation in South Africa within a broader, global context of transitions to democracy and globalised marketization of the media, as well as inspecting specific African examples that may serve to illuminate broader trends. Case studies from different African countries are examined, but in the process the discourses around press freedom are also subjected to critical scrutiny. Critics state that the South African media are not without fault, and that part of journalism scholarship’s role is to continue to point to these shortcomings and to suggest ways of improving the media’s democratic responsibility. Press Freedom in Africa provides a range of perspectives on the heated debates surrounding press freedom. It illustrates the importance of research-based, scholarly interventions into the often emotional and rhetorical debates surrounding the role of the media in African society. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies.

What is the role of the media in Africa? How do they work? How do they interact with global media? How do they reflect and express local culture? Incorporating both African and international perspectives, Media and Identity in Africa demonstrates how media outlets are used to perpetuate, question, or modify the unequal power relations between Africa and the rest of the world. Discussions about the construction of old and new social entities which are defined by class, gender, ethnicity, political and economic differences, wealth, poverty, cultural behavior, language, and religion dominate these new assessments of communications media in Africa. This volume addresses the tensions between the global and the local that have inspired creative control and use of traditional and modern forms of media.

This timely book explores how the internet and social media have permanently altered the media landscape, enabling new actors to enter the marketplace, and changing the way that news is generated, published and consumed. It examines the importance of citizen journalists, whose newsgathering and publication activities have made them crucial to public discourse and central actors in the communication revolution. Investigating how the internet and social media have enabled citizen journalism to flourish, and what this means for the traditional institutional press, the public sphere, and media freedom, the book demonstrates how communication and legal theory are applied in practice.