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Do you live in a news oasis or news desert?
Odoobo C. Bichachi
What you need to know:
- There is no single magic bullet. One way, however, is for government and NGOs to work doubly hard to spread wealth, and to support the media so it can reach the news deserts where it cannot do so profitably on its own.
The haves and have-nots is not just a phenomenon of food on the table or access to social services. It is also very much manifest in access to news and information.
A recent study in the US by Northwestern University culminating in the report, “The State of Local News 2023: Vanishing Newspapers, Digital Divides, and Reaching Underserved Communities” throws up some interesting revelations on how economic status affects our access to news and participation in news.
The study mapped out counties in the US by income and found that people that lived in wealthy counties and were by inference more affluent had more access to local news with several media outlets present. They were also more likely to make news.
Conversely, those that lived in poorer countries had less access to news and their communities hardly featured in news at all.
“…where you live and how much money you make affects whether you live in a news desert or a news oasis. This divide is related to other factors affecting the health of our democracy, as analysis of our data by the nonprofit Rebuild Local News showed,” reads the report in part.
While there has not been such a study in Uganda, at least to my knowledge, it is not difficult to deduce the same phenomenon here. The Kampala metropolitan area that covers the City and districts of Wakiso and Mukono contributes at least 65 percent of the country’s GDP and 80% of industrial and commercial activities revolve around there.
When you scan through our local newspapers or watch local television news bulletins on a typical day, chances are the news stories and features will reflect the above divide. Kampala, Mukono, Wakiso, Entebbe are Uganda’s news oasis. The regions upcountry outside this metro area news deserts, and the farthest from the metro is the “driest” in terms of news.
Even within the regions, the same pattern plays out; the regional towns are a news oasis while the rural sub-counties are news deserts. In Kampala metro, the upmarket areas are a news oasis with the affluent often featuring in lifestyle and news stories in the media while the slums are news deserts with occasional mentions in the media only when tragedy hits them – and which news quickly falls off the media so as not to stress the affluent.
According to a Uganda Media Landscape report by the BBC of 2019, at least 42 per cent of households in the Kampala metropolitan area owned a television set. By contrast, only 3 per cent in Kabale, Teso (2 percent), Bukedi (2 percent), Acholi (2percent), West Nile (1 percent) and Karamoja (0 percent) households owned a television set.
That is a clear dichotomy of news oasis and news desert. Only radio seemed to bring some equalisation with 80 percent of those living in urban areas saying they listened to a radio compared to 76 percent in rural areas. Considering that Uganda radio is more entertainment than information, this near level access may not translate into a news oasis across the board.
For newspapers, the situation is even worse with close to 80 per cent of copies sold in Kampala-Wakiso-Mukono belt leaving 20 per cent to drip around the rest of the country.
One could say the emergence of the internet, mobile telephony and social media has tried to equalize access to news and information. Still, the study found that more urban respondents (78.5 percent), compared to rural respondents (65.7percent) owned a phone.
The implications of a news shadow or news desert on a big part of the country are enormous socially, economically and especially politically. The big number of low calibre Members of Parliament, just to mention one consequence, may perhaps be linked to this. So is the base level of politics in the country.
What is the solution? There is no single magic bullet. One way, however, is for government and NGOs to work doubly hard to spread wealth, and to support the media so it can reach the news deserts where it cannot do so profitably on its own.
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