The "Anti-white press" campaign: the opposition of the African press to the establishment of the Daily Graphic by the British Mirror Newspaper Company in Ghana, 1950

Abstract

British imperial response to anti-colonial agitation in West Africa highly featured efforts to curb the nationalist press. In Ghana, colonial authority failed to bridle a vociferous press by resort to the law. After World War 2 colonial authority encouraged the Mirror Company - a burgeoning media transnational - to establish the Daily Graphic in Ghana (and others elsewhere) to weaken the nationalist press through market competition. Weak capital, mutual political rivalry and colonial maneuvring undermined a fervent campaign to boycott this "White Press Menace". Ultimately the Mirror newspapers so weakened African newspaper proprietorship that, the conditions thus created made it easy for the post-colonial state in Ghana to curtail press pluralism.