This study set out to revisit some of the early newspapers in Africa and their relevance to anti-colonial struggle. It examined their audacious confrontation of the colonial masters, what guided their militant approach, and why such nationalistic tendencies are lacking in the post-independent journalism. The key objectives were to locate the influence of nationalistic ideology on the performance of the pre-independence newspapers. Anchored on the twin theories of agenda setting and social responsibility roles of the media, the study adopted the qualitative data collection method, with the library as its main source of data source. Findings showed that what is lacking in the modern African media are well articulated national ideologies from which the media could draw inspiration in their practices. The study recommends well-articulated national ideologies without which the media will have no foundation for their individual missions that would help reinvent the lost nationalistic zeal.
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The vision behind African mass media, from the pre-independence era, was for the enthronement of liberal democracy. Suffocated by enslavement in their motherland, Africans were unanimous and focused on dismantling colonialism through political advocacy using the newspapers as platforms. Scotton (1978) quotes Erica Fiah, publisher of Tanganyika’s Kwetu, which means “Our Home”, as declaring in 1937 that “without our own paper, we are really non-entities—that fact is certain” (p. 1). Such a strong, principled statement led to the development of what Skjerdal (2012) calls “journalism for social change,” which he describes as “the first set of journalism ideology to challenge foreign-inspired colonial reporting” in Africa (p. 641). The emergence of this media trend followed academic and political exposures gained by such great nationalists and Pan-Africanists as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, while studying abroad.
Africans conceptualised a mass media system to be owned by Africans and domiciled in Africa. The idea was in pursuit of not just the quest for political and economic emancipation, but “for equality of humanity and for recognition and representation” in governance (Nyamnjoh, 2015, p. 1). The principle of the African mass media ownership was, and still remains basically to protect the communal or indigenous political and economic interests of Africans. This they believe could only be done through the enthronement of liberal democracy with freedom of expression as one of the fundamental pillars. Nkrumah (1965) as recalled by Odhiambo (1991) believed that “the true African journalist” should equally be a political activist while the newspaper should be “a collective instrument of mobilisation” and principally, “a weapon for the overthrow of colonialism and imperialism,” a process that will culminate in “total African independence and unity” (p. 30).
The pre-independence African press therefore, in the opinion of Scotton (1978) provided an opportunity and served as an avenue for expressing specific grievances by Africans against the colonial masters, challenge unwanted but statutory social or political ways of life, “and helped to mobilise an African population in support of proposed new patterns” (p. 1). It is believed by Scotton who also cites Apter (1961) that these reasons informed the decision of early African political leaders to set up newspapers “despite the fact that the vast majority of their potential followers were illiterate” (p. 301). These constituted the ideology that drove the pre-independence mass media in Africa.
Ideology—a word usually attributed to highly opinionated political conservatives—has a slightly different meaning when it is used as a media terminology. It refers to the mission of a particular media organ beyond profit-making. It is the driving force of every serious-minded media operator and is often coined to reflect certain environmental expediencies media organisations face. Ideology defines the mission of the media, which in turn defines the editorial policy. While ideology sets the goals and objectives of the media, the editorial policy establishes the route, the style or the process through which the mission can be accomplished. Media ideology can be influenced by the ownership factor, source of funding, the national economy and political dynamics. In most cases, with negligible exceptions, it is the national ideology that sets the tone for individual media ideology.
What constitutes media ideology is the philosophical version of the mission statements. Gershon (2010) confirms that media ideologies help in sharpening peoples’ understanding of “communicative possibilities and the material limitations” of any medium, and their opinions of the media generally (p. 282). In developed political environments, media ideologies are reflections of the national belief and value systems. However, Ewusi-Mensah and Bani-Kwakye (2022) believe that the issue of ideology and its construction of the print media in Africa has received less research attention than expected. This is in spite of its important role in unveiling “the hidden ideological stance and viewpoints of media practitioners and political actors” (p. 592).