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Freeing the Pan-African News Agency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Kevin Cavanagh
Kevin Cavanagh
Affiliation:
Visiting Journalist Fellow, Oxford University, 1988–9, from The Standard, St. Catharines, Ontario
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Extract

After years of constant struggle, the Pan-African News Agency (Pana) appears barely closer to commanding respect and economic stability today than when it issued its first bulletin in 1983. The yearning for noble repute might seem more to do with vanity than necessity, because Pana was created to perform a specific function: to counter what African leaders decried as the negative, distorted coverage of the continent by western news organisations being beamed back to Africa and out to the rest of the world. However, since arriving on the scene six years ago as purveyors of African liberation, content to implement their own ideas of what journalism should be, the Agency's administrators are increasingly making it known that they realise credibility is not superfluous: that in the business of international news, respect goes hand in hand with survival.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , June 1989 , pp. 353 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

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