How Big Media Houses Like Nation Media Group Obstruct Truth and Distort Facts To Fit Ruling Elites

Photo courtesy: Former NTV Anchor Larry Madowo, kicked from Nation Media, will be Joining BBC Africa
By Kevin Arende Oriri 
LEST WE FORGET THE ULTIMATE PRIZE
There is a sense in which the corporate media as a formidable tool in the advancement of the Capitalist agenda has perpetually been involved in the business of obstruction of the truth and the distortion of facts;

The end game for them (The Media) of course is for the attraction of business and maintenance of the status quo to provide a favourable environment for their predominantly commercial venture camoflouged as the exercise of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to information and the like;

Take for instance their obsession with Winnie Mandela’s twilight years/so-called iniquities as opposed to her immense contribution towards the liberation of Black people from white domination;Going as far as encapsulating her entire legacy in a story of romance gone sour; Madiba in the meantime, even posthumously, is celebrated by media outlets as an iconic leader despite abandoning the struggle for the total liberation of the African people to compromise and collaborate with the oppressor;

You will rarely see a documentary or book on Malcolm ‘X’ on the media or even in the streets (not even in Africa) despite the very deliberate and revolutionary methods he used to demonstrate to the white supremacists of that epoch of the unrelenting spirit of the Black race; The media however is awash with quotes and speeches from Martin Luther King Jr, quite predictably so, because he spoke the language that the oppressor wanted to hear…’non-violence’

Back in Africa; the memories of revolutionary leaders like Thomas Sankara and Patrice Lumumba who paid the ultimate price for the struggle against imperialism and racism and others who were deposed from power like Kwame Nkurumah risk being thrown into a deep black hole; the media seems determined to lock up such spirits in a genie bottle to obviate the rising of such strong personalities in the future;

The media highly celebrates the mantra of reform; infact your quickest route to idol status as a politician in a capitalist setting is to first master the gift of gab, create a mammoth following, advocate for peice-meal changes to an inherently unequal system, whip tribal/xenophobic/ethnic emotions, promise Heaven then when it most counts, get to the compromising table with your earstwhile competitor(the incumbent mostly) and ‘negotiate’ on the price for an armistice; you can keep doing that every election cycle; it is actually a life-time career for some;

In the meantime the media will do you (career politician) a favour by giving the much needed airtime and oxygen to the retrogressive vitriol, hot air and chauvinistic rhetoric that characterizes reactionary politics; it can cause and flare once in a while but fundamentally maintain the status quo;

Yet there is still hope; despite the extremely huge outreach of the corporate media and its very efficient propagation of lies, half-truths and the selling of the neo-liberal agenda, there seems to be a certain unquenchable thirst for Pan-Africanism growing across the continent and amongst black people living in the diaspora;

You can see it in amongst other indicators the renaissance of African fashion and art, the collaboration of African music artists in producing fairly-rooted African music and most surprisingly the combatting of false propaganda such as the ones meted on Winnie Madikizela’s legacy; Remarkably the people to people diplomacy and clamour for one Africa is being run by the ‘Millenials’; a sign of the sustainability of the struggle for the coming years;

The respective leaders of the African nations must take cue and move to make a reality the dream of our forbearers of a United States of Africa under a socialist system; Back in Kenya, the struggle to tear down the colonial state and finally give to the people true independence must not be sacrificed at the alter of handshakes and ethnic jingoism;

Finally, the unspoken legacy of Madikizela-Mandela and all African heroes who refused to cede a single inch of our freedom and dignity to the oppressor all the way to their graves must be celebrated and their stories passed on to our children and to our children’s children in order to trully solidify and reverberate the struggle for the total liberation of the African People; Rest in peace Mama!
Amandla!!

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