CHAPTER 10: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION(S) & RECOMMENDATIONS 199-208
5.1 Results
5.1.0 Newspaper Funding through Advertising
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conducive environment for their products or politics, and withholding support from those who do not conform” (Curran, 2002:150). In the arena of funding of the print media and its repercussion(s) on the institution‟s independence, much is not known in Ghana, and in Africa in general.
This chapter investigates the impact of funding through advertising using content analysis of media by first establishing the funding patterns of print media by government on one hand, and private corporate/business entities on the other, in both government and privately-owned newspapers; it also analyses the extent to which these two funding streams generally impact on editorial independence through the lens of agenda-setting and framing. It is expected that with the identification of who funds the media most in Ghana [government or private corporate entities] and subsequently tracking this funding‟s impact on the autonomy of the media with respect to reporting, the findings would better inform future media independence policies.
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Table 5.0: Government-Corporate Newspaper Media Funding Mix through Advertising
Government
Newspaper No. of
Adverts %
[N=560] %
[N=641] Private
Newspaper No. of
Adverts %
[N=81] % [N=641]
Government Sponsored
Adverts 148 26
87
Government Sponsored
Adverts 27 33
13 Corporate
Sponsored
Adverts 412 74
Corporate Sponsored
Adverts 54 67 Total 560 100 Total 81 100 Total Adverts 641
Field Survey, May-June 2014
Tracking government-corporate funding numbers with respect to specific newspapers, the study determined that in government newspapers, 148 adverts were government sponsored and 412 adverts were corporate sponsored representing 26% and 74% respectively; in the private newspapers, 27 adverts were government sponsored and 54 adverts were corporate sponsored representing 33% and 67% respectively. Overall, in the Ghanaian newspaper industry, the government sponsors 27% of advert placement whereas the corporate world sponsors 73%. The above shows that there is a significant difference between media funding of advertising from Ghana‟s corporate bodies, compared to that by the government. These statistics hold in terms of aggregate spending, but as units, the government is a single entity with the most spending. It is evident that the government‟s two main newspapers draw 87% of adverts in the newspaper advertising market, in comparison to the many private newspapers that share the remaining 13%;
this shows that most of private papers run with very few adverts or none. The above table is also presented graphically as depicted below in Figure 5.0.
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Figure 5.0: Government and Corporate Advertising in Newspaper
Field Survey, May-June 2014
The following responses shed lights on the above developments in the Ghanaian newspaper media market:
The media does not depend much on these categories of individuals or institutions. The media are rather disappointed about the business community, the corporate world. In the sense that under normal circumstances they are supposed to help strengthen the media because the media is also playing a certain advocacy role for the entire society so if the business organisations, individuals, government agencies would starve the private media of advertisement, then, I don‟t think they are being fair. Looking at the risk especially of the private print media and the pioneering role they played as long as democratic governance in this country is concerned. A system of governance that has given us all the freedom to operate both businesses and whatever enterprises that people are engaged in.
Today, we are all enjoying that air of freedom as compared to the dictatorial days of yesteryear. (Participant 13)
26%
33%
27%
74%
67%
73%
560
81
641
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
Government Paper
Private Paper All Papers
No. of advertising placement
Government and private-owned newspaper
Government Corporate
Government-Corporate total
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The above participant presents an argument from the struggling past of the Ghanaian media. The participant describes how the press, particularly the private press, has strived towards achieving independence, and most importantly, developing a medium of expression for the entire civil society which before 1992 (and even immediately afterwards) was impossible because of the culture of silence that dominated. The participant continues saying that, despite the sacrifices made by the private media, corporate Ghana, citizens and government alike have abandoned them financially by not advertising in their newspapers. Social actors should acknowledge that the media are the watchdog of the very community in which they operate and thus need to be helped to sustain them in business. A tendency of bias was read by Participant 13 into how corporate bodies and government allocate advertising in the newspaper market.
By referring to „private media‟, the above response suggests that the government-owned media were cowed at the time thus criticisms of major public issues were a feature of the private press. The disappointed position of this participant is reflected in the wide margin between the quanta of advertising in government papers (87%) compare to that of private papers (13%).
Furthermore, another respondent remarked:
The government and/or other actors very often control the media through the allocation of advertising. Consider most of the state newspaper media houses. Daily Graphic for instance gets all the adverts and even the Ghanaian Times, also a state newspaper does not get the advert numbers Daily Graphic receives from the government. The situation is terribly worst (sic) for the private media because we hardly get adverts from the government and even the little ones we get from corporate bodies they [the government]
try to influence them not to give you adverts to run to make profit. Funding is wholly from private source[s]. (Participant 5)
The above quote also establishes that private press is surviving utterly on the support of private avenues because the government newspapers get most of the adverts in the newspaper advertising market and emphasises that the private media find it difficult to attract government- sponsored adverts. Despite this state of affairs that is already financially suffocating the private press, government is in the business of discouraging the corporate community from placing large
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numbers of advertisements in private newspapers. This situation will have a significant impact on public debate if smaller newspapers should shut down as a result of bankruptcy. Moreover, an external manipulative hand in the operations of the media by government and corporate entities cannot be ruled out in advertising allocation. As to why most private media are denied adverts, a respondent explained:
When you look at advertisers, on the part of the ruling party, the government sends most of its adverts to „friendly papers‟ or pro-National Democratic Congress [NDC] or pro- government newspapers. They will rarely send adverts to anti-government or anti-NDC paper like the New Statesman or Ken Koranchie‟s Daily Searchlight. But when we come to corporate Ghana, government is the mega spender in our system and some of these companies and their owners depend on government patronage for their contracts so some of them when they see that a paper is anti-government, they will rarely give you an advert so that they will be in good books of government so that is how advertisers influence content in the newspaper industry. (Participant 9)
The above highlights that two major factors explain the significantly wide gap between adverts published in government and private newspapers. Participant 5 argues that firstly, government gives more adverts to papers that support their policies and ideology, thus allocating advertisements based on political lines. In a situation where papers that are anti-government are denied government sponsored adverts, this suggests that government wants to silence critical voices on major issues of public concern. Secondly, the corporate community disassociates itself from newspapers that are critical of government so as not to offend or alienate the government.
Taking a clue from Participant 5 above, because the government gives contracts to the corporate world, it can influence them in where they should place their adverts. Thus, in order not to alienate their revenue source, corporate entities will publish more adverts in the government newspapers to maintain friendships with the government. Consequently, content of those media outlets who want to attract adverts from corporate sources are influenced by taking a less critical stance or no critical stance in their publications. Furthermore, another respondent observed:
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The media in Ghana is argued to be highly economically dependent on other actors to survive. It is not rare that journalists take payment for taking a certain political stand. The government cannot directly limit the freedom of expression, but financially it can undermine a free and deliberative public debate. The consequence being that the democratic functions normally managed by media in a democratic society are undermined, and so is the public trust in the media. (Participant 12)
The above response shows that Ghana‟s democracy has reached a stage of evolution where it is practically impossible for the ruling class to physically stifle expression freedom. Participant 12 argues that the government and other society groups have capitalised on the fact that the Ghanaian media is ailing economically, and used this circumstance as a bait to condense the substance of their discourse in the public sphere. Eventually, two factors surfaced in this regard.
Firstly, critical voices are lessened, secondly, at the extreme of the continuum, the very community media is serving – civil society, business, public life – has lost confidence in media reportage because it is perceived to lack objectivity due to the high levels of bribery and corruption that occur within the print media.