African media can reverse the downward spiral affecting
newsrooms across the continent, says APO Group chairman, Nicolas
Pompigne-Mognard.



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The media landscape has changed dramatically over the last decade. As a result, newsrooms have been forced to make monumental changes such as reducing the staff complement to keep up with the demands, or they have simply had to shut down. 



With some African newsrooms being written out of history, there has been an emergence of international media setting up shop on the continent. This interest serves as a double-edged sword for African media that often finds itself under-resourced.&nbsp; 



Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard, the founder and chairman of the APO Group, is of the view that the African media landscape has faced challenges that precede digital migration, which have compounded existing problems. An incident that stands out for him, before the digitizing of media, was a lack of access to information for African reporters, and that propelled him to start one of the foremost media relations firms on the continent.



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&nbsp;When he was a
journalist for online publication, Gabonews, and the deputy president of the
Pan-African Press Organisation in France, between 2005 and 2007,
Pompigne-Mognard says this was a recurring problem hampering the productivity
of African reporters.&nbsp; 



“If you wanted the right to attend an international press
conference, you would need an official card. 



“As an African correspondent, the only way for you to have
that card and get access was to prove that you were getting at least €1,000
($1,121) of earnings, and most of them didn’t have that,” says
Pompigne-Mognard.



“It was rooted in disparity. If you have two journalists and one of them has the right card and the other doesn’t, then of course, the other one cannot do his job. He cannot earn money or write articles.&nbsp; 



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“More than that, it reinforced the dependence of African
media on international media. They had no other choice but to rely on the
information provided by the biggest media.”



To remedy the circumstances that seemed to disempower his
peers on the continent, Pompigne-Mognard founded APO from his living room,
using $11,000 in savings. 



APO has grown since its inception as it provides a variety
of media offerings such as press releases, videos, photos, documents and
audio-files. 



The company has sources such as global Fortune 1,000 companies, reputable international and Africa-based PR agencies, governments and international institutions.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“I didn’t start it to make money. I didn’t start it as a business. I wasn’t an entrepreneur at the time. I was a journalist and I wanted to address a problem. At the beginning, I wasn’t even aware that companies were paid to distribute press releases.”</blockquote>



Pompigne-Mognard has since realized many things through the
medium of his company as APO delivered growth of 60% in 2018, representing a
turnover that has more than doubled in two years.



As a correspondent of Gabonews, before the inception of his
company, Pompigne-Mognard was covering Europe, and he had to report
Africa-related news and needed information. As a result, he would ensure he was
receiving as many press releases as possible; however, this came with its own
logistic challenges.



“That’s when I realized it was extremely difficult to
actually ensure I received all the press releases from institutions like the
United Nations, as an example. There was not one point where I could get all
the African information issued by the international system.&nbsp; 



“Journalists had to rely on information that was on
websites. It was very time-consuming to get access to all the content&#8230; 



“It got me thinking about how if international media was not
receiving information from our most important institutions, then what does that
say about our voices in the world?”



A single conversation propelled him to make decisive change,
Pompigne-Mognard says. 



“I had a serious meeting with the president of the African Development Bank at the time, Donald Kaberuka, and he told me something that was instrumental because that’s when I decided I wanted to do something about it. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“What he told me is that the destination of information about African economies contributes to the growth of the continent, because at the time everybody was talking about poverty, war and struggle.”</blockquote>



Over the years, Pompigne-Mognard has observed a similar
trend in the way press releases are compiled and disseminated. 



He feels this has contributed in transforming the narrative
on Africa. 



“Something that is specific with press releases is that 95
percent of them convey good news. Usually, when a company issues one, it is to
say that they are appointing a new CEO, they are opening a new branch, or they
are expanding into new markets. 



“We (APO) have been participating, for several years now, in
changing the African narrative. We are in a unique place where we have a chance
to influence the narrative and make sure that Africa has its own voice and is
not influenced by the bias of international media. 



Although information is accessible to those who seek it, he
says there is currently another challenge that African media needs to resolve
in order to maintain autonomy and make money to sustain itself. 



“I think there is a big problem coming towards us and it is
coming fast,” says a concerned Pompigne-Mognard.



“Nigeria is starting to watch more international media than
the local media. Think about the international companies which are willing to
expand on the continent. What if 10 years from now, the conclusion is that in
the most developed economies on the continent, the nationals are watching more
international media? Where exactly do we think the international companies are
going to spend on advertisements?



“As an international company, why would I deal with five
national TV stations in different countries, if I can approach a single
international station and get, not only those five countries, but also better
coverage?”



Pompigne-Mognard says the continent is ripe with potential and
international media companies, which have observed the budding possibilities,
are striking while the iron is hot. 



“They know the population is going to grow, the middle class
is growing and that purchasing power is growing.”



Finances remain a colossal inhibiter to the growth of
newsrooms, as many have had to retrench to make ends meet. 



The ripple effect is that the quality of the content
produced eventually suffers. 



“On a global scale, the media landscape is in a challenging
position. It has become very difficult to finance content and to find new ways
to make money. Africans also have the same challenges, but often they don’t
have the same means or resources. 



“I would prefer to be wrong on this matter, but if I’m right, in 15 years’ time, the media landscape in Africa will be completely different – in a bad way. 



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“I want Africa to have a strong media landscape. But in
order to do that, people need to understand that media companies need to be run
as businesses.”



But it’s not all doom and gloom for African media;
Pompigne-Mognard sees hope. He says the status quo can be reversed if there is
a joint effort to curb the problem.&nbsp; 



“One of the solutions is to create pan-African media,” he
says. “The person who is going to crack the code and make it happen could be
extremely rich. It doesn’t have to be [entirely] pan-African, even 30-35
countries are more than enough.



“There’s a thing about Africa which is a strength and a weakness; it’s that doing something here will always be more difficult. But the good news is that for those who manage to do that thing in Africa, they can do it anywhere.”

Nicolas

Rewriting The News On Africa

Reporting on the African continent is an “extreme act of courage”, writes journalist Shyaka Kanuma in a Nieman report. The Rwandan was in exile, addressing other Nieman fellow journalists at Harvard University.
The fellowship, one of the most sought after in the world, has seen its fair share of African journalists fleeing trouble back home. Gregory Stemn was one. The Liberian photojournalist chronicled the horrors of his country’s civil war against Charles Taylor’s wishes. South African Nat Nakasa was the first black African Nieman fellow in September 1964. He chose exile to join the fellowship but committed suicide ten months later, jumping off a Manhattan apartment building, manically depressed at the thought of never returning to the country he was forced to abandon.
To be a journalist on African soil is to consign oneself to an uneasy life; be it in war zones or in fearful newsrooms. Greg Marinovich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning South African photojournalist, writing on the tribulations faced by African war photographers noted, “across&#8230; the continent, ruthless regimes bring the violence and fear to bear to suppress the truth.”
This handful of Africans, merely plying their trade on the side of reason, is often forgotten. These are their stories.
January 9, 1994: Katlehong, a township just outside Johannesburg. Gunfire crackles as dignitaries make it beyond the rusted metal shacks of what they called no-man’s land.
Jessica Pitchford was covering the township beat for public broadcaster SABC on that day. Looking into the camera she began, “at the moment, it’s quite safe here&#8230;”
The rattle of bullets broke off the sentence. Pitchford threw herself to the ground.
Ahmed Sharif, a freelance photographer, is shot next to her; dying from his injuries hours later. On the other side, her colleague Charles Moikanyang is shot in the back. She helps him from the line of fire. He survives.
“We were just part of a group of people who happened to be invading an official war zone,” says Pitchford to a magazine a few months after Katlehong.
She wasn’t happy with her story.
“I hate the way I handled this one&#8230; I should have put it in context. I didn’t even mention that a woman and child had also been caught in the crossfire&#8230; all I was worried about was getting Charles to hospital. It was a journalist’s story. A little too self-indulgent, I thought.”
Violence was playing out across the country. In the early 1990s, South Africa was at a crossroads. Political reforms made way for democratic elections to end apartheid. Nelson Mandela was President-in-waiting.
The country’s media was negotiating a new kind of editorial freedom. Journalists were dodging bullets to tell the story of political violence. It is believed that close to 14,000 South Africans were killed during the bloody transition to democracy. Katlehong was ground zero.
Monica Zwolsman was a reporter at Johannesburg newspaper, The Star; the same publication her late husband, award-winning photographer Ken Oosterbroek, worked for.
“Looking back, I am just horrified at what went on and how people lived through that&#8230; I don’t think anyone knew, and we still don’t really know, who was attacking who.”
Zwolsman was part of an innocent and confused generation of journalists.
“I don’t think we, as journalists, had the skills [to cover these events]&#8230; It was difficult trying to get a handle on what was happening. It was never a constant, it started off with pangas (machetes) and steels bars and it evolved to AK-47s.”
Oosterbroek was a leading light in the now-famous Bang Bang Club, a band of daring photojournalists working in what they called no-man’s land – between battle lines drawn in the townships. A week before the elections of 1994, a bullet stopped him forever in Thokoza, east of Johannesburg.
“Everyone knew he was dead except me&#8230; when I got there people had just ran away and I ran into the hospital and I just saw his feet sticking out… that’s when I realized [that he was dead].”
In the book that chronicled their lives out in the field, friend and fellow Bang Bang Club member Greg Marinovich, who was also injured in the carnage says, “after four long years of observing violence, the bullets had finally caught up with us.”
A willingness to pursue a story at considerable personal risk was typical among reporters. They organized in packs; groups of foreign and local journalists moved together, finding safety in numbers.
“The local journalists knew where to go and where not to go. They could read the situation, you had to get to know that and you had to look out for each other. Even today, people are so closely bonded – that group of journalists – because we worked together and we genuinely lived through some crazy times,” recalls Zwolsman.
Back in the safety of the newsrooms, editors could merely keep tabs on their reporters, says Peter Fabricius, who was an assignment editor at the Independent. He sent a number of South African journalists to conflicts at home and further afield in the Congo; it was a difficult job.
“It was pretty nerve-racking having to send people into danger not knowing what you were exposing them to.”
These were the days before cell phones. Cumbersome satellite phones were the only way. But only a few, well-funded, newsrooms could afford them.
Oppression and imprisonment are other occupational hazards. There must be few jobs in the world where you can consider yourself fortunate to end up in jail.
Seyoum Tsehaye is one of those journalists behind bars. He began his journalism career as a guerrilla with the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), the armed movement that ended Ethiopian occupation in 1993.
Some guerrillas were armed with cameras and voice recorders along with Kalashnikovs. They were not objective war-reporters but they captured rare footage of battle and interviewed commanders. These fighters provided the only records of this conflict in Africa’s mysterious hermit kingdom.
After the war, many Eritrean warrior-journalists abandoned their AK-47s to staff the country’s burgeoning state-controlled media. Tsehaye was appointed the country’s first head of state television.
In the late 1990s, with fresh conflict with Ethiopia looming, Tsehaye stopped toeing the party line. He joined an “audacious” independent paper and returned to photography. He began speaking out against the renewed fighting and campaigned for democracy. He was shadowed by secret police until his arrest and detention in 2001.
Recent news of him, provided by “sympathetic prison guards”, claims his health is “deteriorating” as he is shifted from one desert prison to the other.
Still behind bars, Tsehaye won the Reporter’s Without Borders ‘Journalist of the Year Award’ in 2007.
Brian Hungwe, an award-winning journalist from Zimbabwe, is well aware of the risks of political reporting. In 2000, he broke the story of families who lost their sons in the escalating war in the Congo.
Two years earlier, Mugabe mobilized Zimbabwean troops, against the wishes of his electorate, and sent them to the DRC at the start of the Second Congo War. The casualties were considerable.
“It started with one family, their son was a pilot but they only received a knee-cap for burial. They were living in fear that they buried the wrong person,” remembers Hungwe.
Slowly, but surely, more families came forward and Hungwe began an investigation into their claims. It culminated in the “DRC War Casualties Shock” report that won him the CNN Multichoice Journalist of the Year Award.
He was meticulous, even pushing for an official government response, confident that it would shield him from persecution.
“The story was true. If you can defend the truth then you are fortified. I was lucky because the truth was on my side. Getting the government to comment was difficult. They never responded although we faxed them and phoned them as well.”
Once the story was published and Hungwe accepted his award, a senior government representative belatedly denied the story.
Hungwe’s story shows there can be triumphs, as well as danger, in African journalism.
Andrew Mwenda, a Ugandan journalist who has been in and out of prison on sedition charges, continues to push the envelope. In 2007, he founded The Independent, a Kampala news magazine. Mwenda won the International Press Freedom Award from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists in 2008. He owns, edits and publishes the magazine.
“You buy the truth, we pay the price,” is the magazine’s motto. Journalists from Kampala to Katlehong will nod with a knowing smile.

Tag: newsroom

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Rewriting The News On Africa

The Perils Of The Written Word