IPNews-Monrovia: “The model of governments exerting control over State press agencies is completely obsolete and must end,” Khalil Hachimi Idrissii, president of the Atlantic Federation of African Press Agencies or FAAPA, has said.
He argues that it is because such an action on the part of governments reduces productivity and production within the agencies. “It is counter-productive. And States need to take their hands off the energies of news agencies to operate freely. They need to see the agencies as partners in progress, instead.”
Mr Idrissi, also the Director General of the Maroc Agence de Presse (MAP), was speaking to the Liberia News Agency (LINA) exclusively in Rabat, Morocco at the 5th General Assembly of the Atlantic Federation of African Press Agencies convened from the 29-30 November. The seminar was themed “The historical and unique model of the news agencies is dead; invent your future.”
Now, news agencies, essentially in Africa, are revered for the ultimate role they have initiated decades ago in order to syndicate to other media organs, the public, and their subscribers with news and information contents about the country, having been funded by taxpayers’ monies or, in some cases, subsidized by the government.
Some governments would consequently use those agencies as propaganda tools as opposed to freely allowing them serve a general national purpose for the common good.
But Idrissi says the narrative has to take a new, positive, and balance dimension change where inclusivity and engendering of various views can be championed.
“Agencies should go beyond just reporting daily press releases but equally report on all activities, as necessary. Yes, we can talk about government policies and programs and also hear from all relevant actors – political or cultural. This is a public service mission. There should be no room for partiality,” he says.
The news agencies or press agencies as the nomenclature may vary from country-to-c0ountry should be there for everyone irrespective of their backgrounds, according to Ndrissi, “They’re State agencies, that means they are principal actor in democracies of pluralism and diversity.”
In emphasis, he says a news agency should not be censored or closed by the government as that would simply be wrong: “that kind of thing belongs to the past. What works now is that agencies create the platforms for debates on national and global issues, divergence, and promote democracy.”
Meanwhile the FAAPA leader says it was time that the African press fully took control of the analysis of the narratives of the Continent.
“Africa needs to have its proper narratives and this would require for the press agencies to tell the continent’s true stories, lead the analysis, as well as portray the proper global vision thereby reclaiming that role from others.”
“Everything in the world is Africa. Everyone wants to give us advice. Everyone analyses us. Everyone commands us. Let Africa bring back its own analysis to the continent and showcase the real story and image.”
For example, Idrissi further tells his colleague Kwame Weeks that, when there is an event on the continent, everyone, to mean the foreign media and intellectuals elsewhere, would begin to put the continent into their own perspectives as if we ourselves are incapable of doing that.
