CHAPTER 10: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION(S) & RECOMMENDATIONS 199-208
3.6 Theoretical Framework
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Furthermore, the Constitutions of countries like Uganda and Nigeria continues to include laws like libel, sedition and licensing requirements (Schiffrin, 2010:6). This is not entirely dissimilar to other international cases. In America for instance, the term „national interest‟ has been employed as a mechanism to regulate and stifle information flow in the name of protecting the security of the state (Wasserman and de Beer, 2005:45). Drawing the line between national interest and public interest, Wasserman and de Beer (2005:47) explained that the former is a „precautionary‟
mechanism that the government uses to manipulate and convince the media to get it to do its bidding whereas the latter is a „society representative notion‟ of the media that makes it solely duty-bound to provide first-hand unadulterated information to society to enable them informed choices politically.
In summation, it became apparent that countries are classified based on their constitutional guarantees or laws about press freedom, however, this has little impact in determining the actual media landscape. This is because most nations have constitutions or regulations that pay lip service to the principle of freedom of expression and of the press, but their practices normally are completely quite different (Nixon, 1960:17). From this position, an enlightened society should be sought, for through the formal education system to enable the citizenry that the fourth estate represent to monitor and question attempts by any entity, whether public or private, to apply unfriendly regulation to hamper its operations.
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infrastructure and political control as key determinants of international communication processes and effects” (Kraidy, 2002). In their propaganda model based on the political economy of the mass media of the United States, Herman and Chomsky (2008:1-2) theorised using the following news
“filters” “(1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) “flak” as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) “anticommunism” as a national religion and control mechanism.” The model asserts that equality of wealth and power has impacts on media interests and choices and establishes that
“money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalise dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public”. They noted that there is an interaction and reinforcement of filters 1-5 to determine final news. Thus, different entities such as governments and partisan politics, privately owned commercial ventures and other interest groups within society individually have different relations with the media and these can foster prospects or pose threats to their very set goals (Buckley et al., 2008). This presupposes that in most governance structures where connection between the ruling class and the subjects is based on power of legitimacy, responses are expected from the ruled, with the system harbouring many overlapping interests, compromises, mutual agreements and tolerance between holders of political power and the citizens is inevitable. But to cement their legitimacy, political office holders employ the media to communicate to the masses to secure acceptance in society and the entire process involves “some control of information as a way of controlling the public” (Barkan, 1992:167; cited in Gecau, 1996:190).
The notion of the “political economy of news”, for instance, seeks to relate news publication to the economic standing of the media entity itself (Zelizer, 2004:77). Political economists extensively contend that the governing capitalist group dictate to the news media what stories their newspapers should carry (Garnham, 1979; cited in Zelizer, 2004:77). Kwame Karikari (2007:18) observes that “[t]he sources of threats to the development of independent media and journalism in many parts of the African continent today appear to include politicians, religious organisations and possibly commercial interests of dubious origin”. This is informed by the political dynamics of this modern-day democratic practice where political figures and state officials tend to capitalise on their office to have access to private circles in which one‟s association with the state is critical to
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determining power and wealth access. The state, in this context, seems to be manned by the same group of people as the private sector (Gecau, 1996:190). It is worth-mentioning that when media, both print and broadcast/electronic, are independent and competitive, they are more open in their operations and tend to have an enhanced and functional economic setting. With the availability of private capital, media houses do not rely on funding from government to continue operations. Such a conditions do not make the media mouthpieces for the government and they remain free to publish unadulterated content (Dutta and Roy, 2009:243-244). However, by and large, the news media functions not as a key rival of political or enterprise policies but the fact is that these entities have a different ideological bases. Collaboration of the political and corporate class is an imperative without which a typical media outlet cannot function (van Dijk, n.d:28-29) despite the fact that in terms accountability as a fourth estate, the media have the single duty to scrutinise government and businesses (Dutta and Roy, 2009:240). This probably explains to some extent why the media should function as a guide dog instead of a watch dog (Kasoma, 1999:3).
3.6.1 Globalisation
Deregulation and advancements in technology have considerably changed the face of the communication industry globally, but whereas policy framers are busily finding more sophisticated ways of holding information within their satellite and computer networks to prevent accessibility beyond its national borders, media at the national and local levels are altering their positions in a market that has exponentially grown in size (Wasserman and Rao, 2008:164). Globalisation has been defined as “the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole” (Robertson, 1992:8). Also, it….
refers to the rapidly developing process of complex interconnections between societies, cultures, institutions and individuals world-wide. It is a social process which involves a compression of time and space, shrinking distances through a dramatic reduction in the time taken - either physically or representationally - to cross them, so making the world seem smaller and in a certain sense bringing them “closer” to one another (Tomlinson, 1999:165).
The authors in both definitions seem to highlight on the subject of transnationalisation and this confirms the global village phenomenon as postulated by Marshall McLuhan. With privatisation
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and deregulation taking firm root, it has led to trans-border movements of capital and technology (Wasserman and Rao, 2008:165).
Writing on cultural globalisation through media, Kraidy (2002) explains that culture has been globalised as a result of global mass media. Nevertheless, advancements in modern media technologies like the World Wide Web and satellite television have introduced a smooth inflow and outflow of cross-border images to link audiences globally. Kraidy further inquiries how, “[w]ithout global media, according to the conventional wisdom, how would teenagers in India, Turkey, and Argentina embrace a Western lifestyle of Nike shoes, Coca-Cola, and rock music”? The map below (figure 3.0) highlights that media operate in all parts of the globe but most of them are not able to operate as freely as they wish, and even in instances where they are ranked as “satisfactory”, there seems to remain some limiting factors that call for the need to investigate. This informs the position of Gwen Lister (2011:49) who, while assessing the impact of the “1991 Windhoek Declaration”
twenty years after its adoption, noted that the battle for media independence and information access is still far from being achieved and though some progress is evident regarding ownership and control by governments now, as compared to the period prior to the 1990s, there should be constant calls on the ruling class to promote a media landscape that is free, diverse and pluralistic.
By the application of the political economy theory in this study, this study hypothesise that influences on the media which negates its independence is more economic considering global capitalists structures and trends than legal tendencies as it pertains within Fourth Republican Democratic Ghana. Moreover, it hypothesises that issues of ethics form an inseparable component of the forces on the media within a defined political economy of media.
86 Figure 3.0: Global Freedom of the Press Index: Rankings
Source: Reporters without Boarders (2014)
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CHAPTER FOUR
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 4.0 Research Design
This study used an exploratory mixed research method. By definition, mixed methods research is a
research design with philosophical assumptions as well as methods of inquiry. As a methodology, it guides the direction of the collection and analysis of data and the mixture of qualitative and quantitative approaches in many phases in the research process. As a method, it focuses on collecting, analysing, and mixing both quantitative and qualitative data in a single study or series of studies. Its central premise is that the use of quantitative and qualitative approaches in combination provides a better understanding of research problems than either approach alone (Creswell, 2006:5).
This work used interviews and coding instruments through both manifest and latent content analysis as a means of data collection. 15 participants were interviewed from media or quasi-media organisations and twenty newspapers were selected from both state and privately owned newspapers to code advertisements inserted in them, as well as editorials and news. These were to enable conclusion to be drawn on the subject of media independence in Ghana under the Fourth Republic from the perspective of funding, ownership, legality/regulation and professionalism/standards.
Reliability and validity were ensured using percent agreement and/or the pi for inter-coder reliability. The researcher used the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS Version-22) and Microsoft Office [Excel] (Version-2010) for data organisation and extraction and applied thematic analysis as outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006) to present the final results in narrative and tabular formats.