3 - All's Well in the Colony: Newspaper Coverage of the Mau Mau Movement, 1952–56

Summary

Introduction

The Western media have traditionally presented Africa as a place that is difficult to understand because of its “backward” nature. People are unfamiliar with Africa and its complex history, and thus the incomplete and inaccurate images of Africa that permeate the media often influence the way people understand the continent. Americans are generally presented with information that lacks social, cultural, historical, or political context, and this perpetuates the idea that Africa is confusing and unstable. The coverage of Africa was particularly problematic during the era of colonialism, because the colonial powers primarily controlled foreign news about Africa. Although news agencies had correspondents in Africa, problems of language and cultural understanding often hindered reporting. In addition, there were not enough reporters on the continent, and correspondents in one part of Africa were ill-equipped to cover other regions. This pattern of coverage persists into contemporary reporting.

Due to a lack of cultural, social, and historical knowledge, many events are not covered or are inaccurately portrayed; however, conflict tends to receive a lot of coverage. One such conflict, the Mau Mau revolt, received widespread news coverage in the early 1950s. The Mau Mau rebellion was a political and militant revolt against the colonial state in Kenya. The revolt occurred during a time of widespread turmoil in Africa, as various colonies, including many in the British Empire, sought independence from European domination. Researchers have argued that the British government and press attempted to manipulate the unfamiliar, non-Western traditions of the Kikuyu and ignored the Mau Mau's political and nationalist initiatives, to delegitimize the movement and to create an image of the Mau Mau as savage and primitive. This chapter seeks to systematically analyze news coverage of the rebellion to better understand how the revolt was covered in light of the criticisms of news coverage of Africa.

For this particular analysis, I examined newspaper coverage of the Mau Mau in relation to the social and cultural climate of America, Great Britain, and Kenya during the critical years of the Mau Mau movement, from September 1952 through 1956. The focus is on news stories, which are here defined as any stories that are not editorials or op-eds, columns, briefs, or indexes.