Sruti Ahmed

COMM630
Abstract#3
The article addresses the backlash CNN faced with a news report stating, "President Barack
Obama is not just heading to his father's homeland, but to a hotbed of terror’.
Kenya had been challenged with some terror attacks, and the image of misery is not all made up,
but implying the country generates terrorism itself and, this will hamper security of Obama’s trip
created outrage among people. Some Kenyan Twitter talked about American double-standards
and the misrepresentation of their country in the Western media. The hashtag
#SomeoneTellCNN started trending in Kenya to bring the incident in light. Former CNN
journalist and native Kenyan Zain Verjee wrote a blog about how CNN USA chasing short term
profit and ratings, is very different to CNN international which is more sophisticated. But she
defended her colleague who weren’t involved in writing that amusing piece.
Another article addresses similar issue which is about an Instagram user who goes by the name
of Jossa Johansson coming under fire for the caption of a post with a photo of herself embracing
a little girl from Kibera, Kenya stating that how lucky she is to meet her and how unfortunate the
little girl’s life is and will turn out to be. Even though she ended the caption with a positive note,
it faced huge criticism for obvious reason.

The message was regarded as very offensive, humiliating and full of pride by the Kenyans and
other Africans. People in twitter started posting it with a screen grab, and volunteers started
campaigning to protest this. According to the campaigners, the selfie takers may not realize that
their posts can be derogatory, and they are not concerned with others’ dignity or privacy. They
suspect the photos are being posted only for likes. Radi-Aid and Barbie Savior have gained
popularity with their satire and humor to tackle issues like poverty porn, voluntourism and
the white-savior complex. Ogard and the co-founder of Barbie Savior, came up with guidelines
and rules on when traveling to the developing world. They hope that the guide will make the
travelers more aware and respectful of different cultures and traditions. According to Ogard,
despite their efforts, Westerners posting insensitive post without considering the children's
privacy or vulnerability just to make themselves hero for Africa without giving any context at all.

In my opinion, western media gives negative coverage to Africa. They search out the most
unfortunate events and miserable environments to film in and continue propagating against
Africa. This is not always done to draw attention to problems. The reason might be to generate
an emotional response that leads to generalizations or the fact that bad news sells well. As a
result, when people think about Africa, they tend to forget that Africa is not a country, rather, it
is a continent filled with diverse countries. They think all Africa has all the problems such as
poverty, terrorism and corruption. In reality, the picture of Africa is very different than the way it
is viewed by the western public.
From these articles, we can conclude that western falsification of the image of Africa might be
spread though social media targeting young people. Kenyans and other Africans must come up
with their own storytelling platform to get recognized for their real image, culture and attitude.
Thus, their message will be heard globally and change the negative perception.