CHAPTER 10: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION(S) & RECOMMENDATIONS 199-208
2.3 Previous Studies
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which inhibit it from executing its role as a watchdog for public interest within the public sphere.
Overall, it can be deduced that the independence of the media is tied to the interplay of both immediate (internal) and remote (external) stakeholders of a defined society.
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determinant in explaining the allocation of advertising and the coverage of corruption scandals.
In a related argument, Gehlbach and Sonin (2014) theorised using media bias and ownership as dimensions of media freedom to determine government control of media across nations over a time period. Their model showed that in both state and private media, bias falls with a large advertising market, but with a high chance for government to take over private media. The more government embraces democratic ideals, the more divergent state and private media bias becomes, while in both democracies and autocracies, media bias converges as positive external factor from mobilisation increase. They further argued that media bias increases and there is possibility of state ownership of media when government has a specific interest in mobilising people to achieve political aims, but such actions may not advance the interests of the people.
However, Petrova (2011) sampled nineteenth-century US newspapers in a study that sought to test whether three hypotheses hold. The study established that there is likelihood for newspapers to be autonomous of partisan parties in places where higher advertising incomes abound. Also, the higher the advertising rate at a place, the more likely those newspaper entrants into the market will be independent; and lastly it established that beyond economic development considerations, strong political actors thwart the incentives of media organisations to achieve independence through given sponsorship to party affiliated outlets.
Jenifer Whitten-Woodring (2009:595-6) explored the mismatch between a media culture and the type of regime and highlighted that there is an expectation that free media is associated with democratic states whereas state-controlled media is prevalent in autocratic states; however, the reverse is also visible in some situations, where democratic government controls the media and the autocratic government is somewhat liberal towards the media. Based on this, Whitten- Woodring examined the relations that exist between media freedom and the manner in which government behaves with respect to human rights. She identified that this relationship differs, depending on how autocratic or democratic the government is. She reported that “while media freedom is associated with higher governmental respect for human rights in countries that are most democratic, in countries that are autocratic, or not fully democratic, media freedom is related to lower government respect for human rights”. For example, in tune with Whitten- Woodring‟s position, Kellam and Stein (2014:2) found in their study spanning twenty years, from 1993-2013, that democratic Ecuador, as well as most democracies in the Latin American countries, irrespective of the ideals of democracy that they claim to practice, extensively
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trampled on the freedom of the media. Putting the Southern African Development Community‟s (SADC) evolving democracy under scrutiny, Balule (2008) examined the impact that insult laws exert on freedom of the media. The study revealed that though nations forming the SADC have democratic governance systems with constitutions that safeguard media freedom and expression, there exist obsolete laws in the same constitutions that protect public office holders from critical voices raised against them. Balule argued that most of these laws are incompatible with the current systems of government.
Ogbondah (1994:28-9) investigated press freedom and political economy within Africa and noted that many of the continent‟s socio-economic and political issues such as corruption, bribery, mismanagement, poverty, inefficiency among others, are primarily due to the fact that the press is not free. He explained that though mass media alone cannot achieve the task of curbing corruption, its role will bring to light the act of discouraging administrative stealing and hasten the development of the continent‟s political economy. Ogbondah finally argued that:
if the press is free to engage in the discourse of how to spend public resources, the poverty, malnutrition and diseases may not be as severe as they are today. This is because there is an institution that is ready to speak out against corruption and the wrongful diversion of resources meant for development (1994:29).
The above revelation is buttressed by the work of Ahrend (2002) who investigated the relations between press freedom, human capital and corruption and produced evidence that higher corruption levels is associated with the paucity of press freedom. By this, Ahrend proposed that in the fight to curb corruption, press autonomy should be one of the major measures to consider because it is an indirect mechanism to deal with and/or manage human capital and corruption. This position has again been confirmed in subsequent study captioned “A free press is a bad news for corruption” by Brunetti and Weder (2003).
Alam and Shah (2013) recruited a panel from 115 countries to explore the role press freedom play in the development of a country, considering Economic Growth (EG) and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as variables. Their study revealed that a free press enhances economic growth. Countries experiencing such a growth tend to allow more room for freedom of the press.
This finding is consistent with the remarks of James Wolfensohn, erstwhile President of the
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World Bank, who argued that “a free press is not a luxury” but is rather “at the absolute core of equitable development” (cited in Ahrend, 2002:3). In the African context, Julius Nyerere (1974:25) likened the interplay of freedom and development to the inseparable nature of the chicken and egg puzzle when he noted that “without chickens you get no eggs; and without eggs you soon have no chickens. Similarly, without freedom you get no development, and without development you very soon lose your freedom”. Furthermore, Dutta and Roy (2009:240) also conducted a similar study over a 20-year period and presented an argument that the higher the level of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the economy, and whose impact is felt on the media sector, creates an avenue for free and vibrant media. Their work established that FDI inflow is a vital contributor to media freedom and explained that larger FDI inflows finally lead to „financial comfort‟ of the media industry, thus moving them a step further to free it from the major influences within both state and commercial interests. Using a panel of 31 nations from Sub-Sahara Africa spanning 1984-2007, Armah and Amoah (2012) investigated the relationship between freedom of the media and political stability. Their study revealed media freedom, investment, growth and economic policy are related significantly to political stability, with press freedom showing increasing trends to promoting stability.
Djankov, McLeish, Nenova, and Shleifer (2001) examined media ownership patterns in 97 countries globally and ran a regression analysis to find out the consequences of state ownership of media on press freedom, development of political and economic markets and social issues. Their study showed that globally, government and families own the largest media establishments but state-owned patterns of the media are more frequent in broadcasting than print. They added that government ownership of the media is associated with a combination of lower levels of press freedom, lower economic and political rights and inferior social outcomes in health and education domains. Similarly, Leeson (2008) examined the relations between media freedom from state control on one hand, and political knowledge of citizens, participation and voter turnout on the other. He found that a less regulated media that allows high private ownership creates an atmosphere that enables citizens to be politically knowledgeable, whereas citizens tend to be politically ignorant if the state owns greater share of media and its infrastructure.
Oloyede (2005) undertook a conceptual analysis of press freedom and argued that with the evolution of the notion of freedom of the press under libertarian reasoning in post-1688 England,
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efforts to execute press freedom in society‟s interest, based on the perceived position as „ideal‟ or
„true‟, have proved difficult. He further explained that the structure of the press and its accompanying freedom is dictated by the socio-political structure - thus making an ideal press freedom, which will be advantageous to entire society (regardless of socio-political class) tedious, if not impossible to implement. To deal with the socio-political structure and influences on the media, Oloyede made two concrete suggestions. Firstly, that control and ownership of media should be democratised to enable civil society to take the role of owning and managing the press in their own interests and that of citizens. This is because the form of control and ownership plays a part in defining and practicing press freedom; (2005:108). Secondly, he averred that media owned and managed by small groups within society should be supported through a system of government subsidy to enable media to fully represent the views of those neglected (2005:109). However, the latter proposition appears to be still-born because of the existing postulation that the content of media is influence by its financiers.
Arguing to disprove the beliefs that the notion of press freedom are traced to liberalism and a free marketplace of ideas, Nordenstreng (2007) pointed out that issues of marketplace of ideas coupled with self-righting truth is absent from the doctrines of Milton and Mill. However, he explained that both preached freedom of thought and expression with no prior censorship.
Despite the above, Nordenstreng maintained that freedom of speech and of media should be accorded great importance due to their positions as contributing to human lives, and society generally. Writing on the performance of the Ghanaian press, Anokwa (1997:25) observed that it was under pressure and would be able to assume independent status only when a fully civilian government became the commander-in-chief of the military with a financially viable press.
These concerns call for the need to investigate the independence of the present-day Ghanaian media especially now that a fully civilian government with no military features is at the helm of affairs amidst unclear funding situation. Similarly, Phiri (1999) examined the position of the media in Zambia amidst multiparty democracy to identify the factors that have crippled it. He pointed out that the democratisation process in 1991 did not impact significantly on the state- media relationship. Phiri concluded that any attempt to make the media independent was confronted by the state who owns and controls key news outlets. Moreover, media independence was feeble; a situation he attributed to intimidating political and legal settings and harsh economic circumstances which were largely financial. Above all, he explained the Zambian
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media lacked professionalism to engage in pluralistic democratic discourse. Professionalism has been cited by several scholars as one of the factors hindering the development of media worldwide. For instance, Kasoma (1994:41) discussed from a generalised media perspective whether the implementation of media law or media ethics ensured responsible media practice. He concluded that overall, the realisation of ethical journalism is possible only on condition that journalists as individuals or as a group jointly observe ethical practices under all situations.
Media laws exist simply to check some unethical behaviour of some media personnel but its attainment is largely due to the desire of journalists to allow themselves to be guided by these laws.
Martin (1992:335) delved into “building independent mass media in Africa” and revealed that independence of the media goes beyond merely putting an end to government ownership and control but also required the institution of legal mechanisms that enabled journalists to operate without state interference and protection against influences and financial pressures from the economic giant (multinationals) from Africa and abroad. Faringer (1991) presented issues of press freedom in Africa confined to Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya and kicked against the notion of development journalism on the basis that the position of the West in defining the press as the
„fourth estate‟ is inapplicable in Africa and far from realisation. She pointed out that the objective with which colonial authorities launched the press on the continent was to advance government policy and the press has often become a prey for censorship. Moreover, the multi- ethnic and multi-linguistic composition of African societies is a factor that influences participatory media.
From the above works, the significance of media independence to every society globally cannot be underestimated and seems to suggest that no human settlement / institution can do without its functions. However, these studies have not given much space to issues of media funding, diversification, ownership, legality beyond Constitutional provisions, other forms of influences such as professionalism and ethics. This is especially true of the Ghanaian print media context, and specifically under its Fourth Republic and its impact on editorial independence. This study fills a significant gap because it sets out to go beyond the traditional debate on legal and political dimensions of „government-media‟ relations and dwells extensively on the economic domain using content analysis to determine firstly, who funds the operations of
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the media (government or businesses), in the first instance through the placement of adverts into the print media specifically newspapers. This is a pre-requisite to better approach issues of media independence in Ghana. Secondly, the study also intends to find out whether the media has diversified its operations for revenue generation purposes beyond the confines of the media industry to mitigate the reliance on any single revenue source within the industry.
2.4 Media and Society: Issues of Ethics, Standards, Accountability and