The first thing that grabs one’s attention about this book is what appears to be an unduly optimistic title. To write of a “post-conflict Africa” seems to evoke the same issue of gleeful overreach as Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 1992). However, the interrogative subtitle, Votes and Voices for Peace?, readily disabuses one of that notion. The book is not so much about a postconflict Africa as it is about the challenge of transiting to democracy. Specifically, it “focuses on a particular situation: elections organized in countries that have experienced armed conflicts” (12) and how the respective news “media have operated in the fragile and dangerous environment” (14).
Besides the introduction and the conclusion, the book develops these topics in four in-depth chapters dealing, respectively, with (1) the general challenges of conducting and covering elections, (2) the news media’s preelection commitments, (3) their performance during the campaign phase, and (4) their performance from election day through the announcement of results. The introduction outlines the criteria by which the news media’s performance in each phase is analyzed.
The six Central African countries studied are Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Chad. Frère develops this book on the basis of a number of theoretical premises, the most central among them being: (1) that multiparty elections are the foundations of democracy, though not at all a panacea for peace; (2) that transitional elections are “undoubtedly [the beginning of] a long and difficult process” (9); and (3) that independent, diverse, and responsible news media are essential to, though not guarantors of, the success of transitional elections.
On the question of the news media as “hatemongers or peace-builders,” Frère suggests a significant transition from the first to the latter, but not without major qualifications. She notes, however, the two-fold impediments to the media’s role: propagating the ethos of elections where there have been minimal or no such experiences, and doing so with minimal resources. As to the importance of elections, Frère writes that “though the elections could not in themselves provide solutions to the problems that triggered the conflicts or that ensued from them, they appeared to be the only means by which to legitimize an authority . . . ” (71).
This, then, is the context of the remaining three chapters dealing with the news media’s roles in the three phases of elections: preparation, campaign, and balloting/results. Regarding the preparation phase (chapter 2), Frère explains the news media’s roles as “informing, educating and even motivating” (75). These roles seem simple enough. However, a major contribution of this book is that it shows how such seemingly simple tasks are complicated beyond the mere question of capacity and reach. For instance, merely using the word “election” may evoke “electoral trauma” for the populace and “media trauma” for journalists.
Regarding the campaign phase (chapter 3), Frère also analyzes multiple complications: “One of the main challenges during a campaign is to offer citizens a clear distinction between electoral information, political information, political communication and advertising” (127). However, she reports various deviations from this mission and even violations of legal and ethical standards, among them partisanship, activism, and incendiary content. In polities where the private broadcast media are officially paid to cover election-related events, some still shun them to avoid reduced ratings. Frère illustrates this concern by citing an audience survey in Kinshasa in July 2006 that showed that while stations that carried campaign events declined in ratings, the audience of one that “that had been showing a Nigerian television series had grown by 29 percent” (147).
The news media also have to manage duplicity in campaign rhetoric. In Congo, for example, candidates were restrained and constructive when speaking in French (for the general audience) but divisive and incendiary in their native language (for their own ethnic groups). This posed a challenge for the press to properly represent the candidates’ positions. There is the related challenge of giving voice to the general public through call-in broadcasts, in which callers can be extremely provocative in their comments.
In chapter 4, Frère analyzes the pivotal issue of trust and the media’s capacity to monitor transparency. “On polling day,” she says, “the media aim to report on voting operations and to verify the transparency of the process” (187), but that is a daunting task and the press has devised mechanisms to deal with it. In media-poor Chad, for instance, the press pooled its resources by sharing coverage responsibilities and exchanging information, and “the Chadian experience was so successful that it inspired similar initiatives elsewhere” (189). Still, in the end, the best the press can do is report and comment on the probity of the process. If, as Frère illustrates with many examples, the process or execution of an election is rife with irregularities, the consequences are beyond the control of the press.
The concluding chapter recaps the points of the substantive chapters and ends with the question of whether one should be optimistic or pessimistic about the role of the media. As in the rest of the book, Frère does not weigh in heavily on either side, but the reader can readily deduce that she leans on the side of optimism.
Incidentally, for a book that was translated from another language (French), the prose is commendably fluid and highly accessible. The book can be recommended to everyone who is interested not only in the role of the news media, but also in the dynamics of contemporary African politics.
