Media Accountability In Tanzania’s Multiparty Democracy

This dissertation interrogates the effectiveness of voluntary and non-statutory (nongovernmental) media councils in promoting self-regulation of mass media in the context of Africa’s democratization. With the reintroduction of multiparty democracy in Africa in the early 1990s, external initiators and sponsors of Africa’s democratization – donor countries, multilateral aid organizations1 , as well as internal media stakeholders and activists, campaigned persistently for a free press on the grounds that it was an integral part of pluralistic democracy. This new condition for multiparty democracy meant a departure from direct control of media through restrictive laws, to a freer, diverse and self-regulated media regime common in liberal democracies. The major postulation in this paradigm shift was that since African countries had adopted Western2 liberal democracy, with its free market fundamentals, then it followed automatically that the media sector also had to adopt and reflect the ideals of that democracy. This trajectory is supported by a notion that a free media is both desirable and necessary in a democracy for holding the government accountable to citizens, promoting diversity of views and creating an informed citizenry through free flow of information and unfettered debate (see Curran 2002; Gurevitch & Blumler 1990, 1995; Christians et al. 2009). It was this conceptual position that inspired media activists, policy advocacy groups and civil society since early 1990s to demand for press freedom and self-regulation of mass media as a way of enhancing their role in the democratization process. Nevertheless, the import of Western notions of liberal democracy into Africa without sufficient interrogation of their relevance and effectiveness continues to invite critical discourse and the need for further scrutiny into what is best for the continent (see Berger 2002). Accordingly, the focus of this study – the effectiveness of a voluntary and independent media council in spearheading self-regulation in Africa’s democratization – necessitates critical discourse that could lead to a new theory about media role and accountability in democratization. As such, this research problem invokes the need to understand historical context as well as current realities in which Western liberal democracy – with all its fundamental ideals – is being transplanted onto Africa.