News Media Logic and Democracy: Strange Bedfellows in Political News-making Practices of Private Radio Stations in Ghana

Abstract

including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request.News media logic and democracy: strange bedfellows in political news making practices of private radio stations in Ghana.

Decolonising Political Communication in Africa

“…Yet, as with culture, the media are not neutral but very gendered in their coverage of political news and actors (Anderson et al, 2011;Ette, 2017;O'Neill et al, 2016;Ross, 2017). There is overwhelming evidence that points to biased media coverage which favours male politicians in terms of giving them voice, more space, greater range of topics to speak on and an essentially issue-based coverage, while female politicians have to contend with erosion of their presence and voice, marginalisation, infantilisation as well as trivialisation of their political contributions (Ette, 2017;Ibroscheva and Raicheva-Stover, 2009;Osei-Appiah, 2019;Ross, 2017). For example, Katembo (2005) shows that during the 2004 South African general election, only 26 women politicians were used as news sources in the Sunday Times compared to 313 male politicians.…”

“…These examples highlight the media's complicity in perpetuating both the erasure and trivialisation of women's political contribution which also affects how they are perceived and evaluated by voters. In so doing, the media serve to sustain the colonial enterprise of male dominance in politics as such practices not only contribute to less favourable evaluations of female candidates but also discourage women politicians from engaging with the media (Ette, 2017;Osei-appiah, 2019;Ross, 2017).…”

“…Payment can be in the form of cash or in kind. The practice is quite endemic among media organisations in most of Africa (Amankwah et al, 2017;Osei-Appiah, 2019;Sampaio-Dias, 2019;Skjerdal, 2018). The challenge with incentive-driven coverage is that it creates a media culture that undermines the ideals of journalism in that it facilitates biased reporting while constraining diversity in media content (Sampaio-Dias, 2019).…”