Eurocentric Media Training in Nigeria

Abstract

Many scholars, especially in the developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, have been attracted to the study of dependency theory in economics and have recently extended such theories to their criticism and attacks on social and cultural imperialism. The mass media in particular, as a technoindustrial mechanism for transmitting information and entertainment to a potential mass audience, are seen as an important element in this global process. Although dependency theory is widely used in Africa as the basis of criticism of Western media domination, there has been little success in suggesting viable alternative models, specifically in the area of education, training, and socialization of journalists for the African media. Peter Golding (1979) suggests that it is the ideology, but not the practice of professionalism, at least in its ideal form, that is transferred. Similarly, Rita Cruise O'Brien (1979) suggests that media professionalism in the so-called Third World is an incorporation of the Third World into the metropolitan base. This integration, it is argued, is achieved through the mechanism of institutional transfer, training, and education, and the diffusion of occupational ideologies (Golding, 1979). Of these mechanisms, education and training of media personnel has had the most pro-