Enlightened Media

Sir Henry Morton Stanley, Welsh journalist and explorer, meeting the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone on 10 November 1871, in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika. The inscription reads ‘This engraving, for which I supplied the materials, represents my meeting with Dr Livingstone at Ujiji, Lake Tanganyika; and is correct as if the scene had been photographed,’ with a facsmile of Stanley’s signature. Published in an extra supplement to the Illustrated London News, 10 August 1872.

Why imperial logic remains entrenched in modern journalism

Today, Enlightenment liberalism is revered as the cornerstone of modern Western society that led to human rights, academic institutions, scientific progress, liberal democracy and Western prosperity. However, the logic that mythologizes the Enlightenment can only exist by segregating it from its historical and cultural context, one so intertwined with and supported by colonial expansion and imperial logic that the news media still bears its marks today. Journalism’s foundational practical, structural and intellectual frameworks were developed alongside the Human Sciences, the spread of liberal democracy and massive colonial expansion in Africa in the latter half of the 19^th century in a kind of Western imperial feedback loop.

The Enlightenment of the 18^th century is a paradox: as enlightenment thinking developed, Western notions of modern humanism and liberal individualism whereby all – Western and white – men were endowed with reason, universal dignity, moral conscience and self-will, imperial powers conquered, exterminated and enslaved native populations. The enlightenment logic of Western exceptionalism and the classification of peoples into races and sub-races – humans and sub-humans – provided the justification for colonial expansion – and the transatlantic slave trade – while maintaining the concepts of human rights.

Colonial logic dictated that it was the duty of imperial powers to elevate and enrich their enlightened people by expanding their empires, exploiting strategic resources of conquered nations, and civilizing the uncivilized world; it was the ‘White Man’s Burden’.

Late 18^th-century enlightenment philosophers were responsible for major educational reform in Germany, France, and England, laying the foundations for modern academic institutions and the development of the sciences we know today. However, scholarly innovation was expensive and complicated, requiring financing and support. Academics began accompanying colonial expeditions, exploring, recording, classifying, and studying lands and people as imperial forces subjugated them and, in turn, colonial riches began financing their institutions. The Scramble for Africa ( between 1881 and 1914), where imperial powers invaded, divided, and colonized the remaining 90% of the unconquered African territory, often saw scholarly expedition accompanying colonial forces.

International journalism can directly trace its beginnings to British Imperialism, as wherever the Empire expanded, new Newspapers appeared to cater to overseas British bureaucrats and businessmen.

These expeditions led to the rapid development of Western academia and scientific study, including that of the human sciences such as anthropology, ethnography and evolutionary biology, all of which were framed within the paradigm of positivist progress.

The headway created by colonial academic advancements still have profound impacts on scientific research today, as academic rankings tend to favour institutions from former imperial countries and academic journals are mostly dominated by the U.S. and Western Europe.

As a result of this cultural, economic and structural supremacy, Academic Imperialism and dependency emerged; scholars from non-Western countries began to depend on the ideas and institutions of Western ones. In the late 19^th century, these Western liberal academic institutions educated those who would develop the new forms of journalism and revolutionize the news media by targeting a popular audience in the 1880s. This New Journalism became so increasingly professionalized that by the early 20^th century, Journalistic education had developed into full blown University departments, only reinforcing the influence of liberal Western academic thought on journalistic models and practices.

Meanwhile, Western – and most notably American and British – newspapers began consolidating into the first media conglomerates. Popular, structured and well-funded, these news organizations began establishing wire services, foreign bureaus and dispatching foreign correspondents abroad. As institutions immersed in imperially-funded capitalist frameworks and colonial logic, the news media accompanied, publicized and popularized colonial expansion. Most memorably, The New York Herald’s Henry Morton Stanley travelled to what is now Tanzania to mythologize British explorer and missionary Sir David Livingstone. Subsequently, Stanley continued his dispatches and exploration of the African continent funded by King Leopold II of Belgium (Jeal, 2007).

Western news media grew alongside the colonial empires that seeded them; their popular, well-financed, and innovative arrangements established models for foreign markets to follow, ultimately becoming normative in content, structure, financing and publishing throughout the Western world, including its vast colonies. So advanced and well-resourced Western news outlets had become that newspapers in non-imperial countries began to develop a dependency on the news and information that they reported. By the early 20^th century, developing nations began importing Western journalism by sending their students to be educated at Western journalism schools. The age of Western media imperialism had begun.

As Daniel Trilling writes in Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere, “Europe has played a key role, historically, in the shaping of a world where power and wealth are unequally distributed, and European powers continue to pursue military and arms trading policies that have caused or contributed to the conflicts and instability from which many people flee.”

Despite the mainstream media’s attempts to divorce itself from its imperialist foundations, remnants of colonial logic persist to this day. Today, Western media remain so entrenched in Africa’s colonial-era framing that they often dismiss African voices from global discourses that concern them. So, as Western journalism believes itself to adhere to normative standards and values itself has developed – objectivity, clarity and fairness – it continues to support systems of Western privilege.