Diversity and Media Ownership in Malawi

Aleke Banda, whose family owns Nations Publications Ltd.

Kamuzu Banda, whose family owns Blantyre Newspapers Ltd.

Diversity and my study
By Idriss Ali Nassah

My area of interest is to study Malawian newspapers, largely because journalism in Malawi have been the focus of much public criticism but in spite of the criticism, there has been little scholarship of journalism conducted in the country.

The result is that what is known and taken as the truth about journalism in Malawi does not represent the whole, testable truth. While political and economic changes continue to affect the media landscape in Malawi, ownership of Malawi’s only two national dailies remain in the hands of two powerful families with ties to two opposing political parties.

Blantyre Newspapers Ltd, the publishers of The Daily Times, Malawi News and The Sunday Times is owned by the family of the founding president of Malawi, Hasting Kamuzu Banda and, until his death in 1998, the life president of the Malawi Congress Party. The party ruled the country with an iron fist since independence in 1964, until it was ousted at the ballot in 1994. Nation Publications, publishers of The Nation, Weekend Nation and Sunday Nation is owned by the family of Aleke Banda, a former finance minister and vice-president of the United Democratic Front. The party won elections that toppled Kamuzu Banda (not related) in 1994 and ruled the country for the next ten years. Aleke Banda was to defect to lead an opposition party, People’s Progressive Movement.

My study will examine model ways of ownership of newspapers largely because concentration of media outlets by a small number of individuals or corporation is viewed as detrimental, dangerous, or otherwise problematic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership).

As of 2002, Malawi had 11 independent newspapers: two dailies—The Nation and Daily Times; seven weeklies—New Vision, Weekly Chronicle, Statesman, Malawi News, Weekend Nation, Enquirer, and UDF News; one government-owned biweekly—Weekly News; one privately owned weekly paper, The People's Eye; and finally, The Mirror, published four times a week (http://www.pressreference.com/Ky-Ma/Malawi.html).

There is no Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) in Malawi to certify the sizes of circulation for newspapers and magazines. Newspapers largely circulate in urban areas, which have about 10 percent of the country's population, while only a few trickle to the rural areas. The World Bank reports that daily newspaper circulation in Malawi is 3 per 1,000 people. However, most of the newspapers listed above, and others that appeared sporadically since then have folded. The only visible newspapers are those owned by the two political families. (Reporters Without Borders. Malawi: Annual report 2002. Available from http://www.rsf.fr/).

The following is a list of some of the newspapers that were short-lived: The New Voice, The Watchers, The Malawian, Michiru Sun, City Star, Financial Observer, Weekly Mail, News Today, The Herald, New Express, Daily Monitor, and The Democrat, a hugely popular independent newspaper which collapsed in 1996. The Independent and The Star were phased out in 1999 because of lack of support from influential politicians. The Mirror (owned by Brown Mpinganjira, the country's foreign minister) survived longer than most.

It is not only developing countries that have had to deal with this matter. Even America has had to face questions of diversity in media ownership. A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) public hearing on media ownership in 2006 was told: “Without diversity in ownership and participation, our democracy is in danger” (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_16_110/ai_n16818918/).