Pisani on AIDS in Africa

Elizabeth Pisani has been doing the junket since her book, the Wisdom of Whores, was released. Reviews, and interviews galore. The book, I suppose, is trying to batter conventional wisdom on what we think we know about AIDS transmission and treatment. I haven't read the book, so I hope this isn't too much of a simplification. The reviews should give more of an idea.

I saw her HARDtalk last week, in an interview that was remarkable in its level of broken taboos. Go to the HARDtalk page, and watch the interview. On the right hand side of the page, click on the third clip on Africa. She talks about the sexual practices of Africans in relation to the transmission of HIV.

Something of the Fidel

I was in the US just last week, trying but failing to just chill out, and visiting la famiglia (both in crime and blood). It had been eight years since I went, but it was still easy as pie to slot in and feel at home. I also did the "Chinese bus" trip from New York to DC, which made me turgid with middle-class guilt about labour, unions, safety. All because I didn't pay top dollar on the Greyhound instead.

While visiting my uncle (real uncle, not "uncle" in the African sense) in Maryland, he asked about work, how I was doing, etc - as uncles are wont to do. "I love the BBC", he said. "But". But what, uncle? "But why do all the stories about Africa involve animals and doom and gloom?" This is a tough one to defend, especially because often I work on the Africa desk. Also because I don't like the Dark-Continent-as-one-huge-Safari pre-colonial view of the continent. Still, please don't send me any complaints about misspellings, pronunciations, or anything else to do with the BBC.

People want to hear good news about Africa when the truth is that good news isn't reported about anywhere else. The nature of news is such that it's about what's happening now. "Man scoops dog's poo from pavement" isn't as newsy as "man bites dog." For all the sins attributed to the BBC, it does do is fair share of "good news" stories. It's just that it does them in the context of current affair documentaries. I've just seen one on BBC World: Survivor's Guide - The Nurse Next Door. Set in northern Nigeria, it displays the kind of community healthcare needed to sustain and enhance the wellbeing of Africa. Rural areas are too often marginalised in planning in Africa, and the documentary shows there are solutions. There's something of the Cuban healthcare system about it, a touch of Fidel. Watch below (hopefully):

As I said I would

I did say that I would try and find a discussion on media coverage of Africa. This discussion was between the Nigerian Guardian's Reuben Abati, and BBC World Service programme, The World Today presenter, Max Pearson. Broadcast February 16. Before you get het up about the abrupt end, there were time constraints. Five and a half minutes on an item is a lot, believe me.

Document

On tonight's Document on Radio 4, Mike Thompson will be looking at Harold Smith's allegations that the Brits rigged Nigeria's independence elections. Today broadcast a preview.

The verdict

Why do her looks elicit such gushing remarks from people who've seen the interview? It reminds me of a story my aunt once told me and my cousins. She was invigilating an ACCA exam, when a woman was caught cheating. My aunt said to me, "it was such a shame - she was such a fine girl". So I ask, what do her looks have to do with anything?

Actually, by the time I pushed the "enter" button twice for this paragraph, it's dawned on me. Aderonke used the exact same word I was going to use to describe her demeanour during the course of the interview - coquettish - which has come up time and again in people's comments. Her coquettishness and her pretiness are intertwined, which explains why her looks have been so apparently apparent. Her coquettish might be less plausible if she wasn't so pretty.

That said, another word also came to mind. Ingenue. But it's probably unfair to use either ingenue or coquette to describe her, as she is evidently a writer who talks and knows about serious issues. When she talks about Africa being the White Man's Burden, she does it as seriously as one would hope. It's the timing of all the other characteristics of a coquette that make us sit up - a smile, a giggle, a flutter of the eyes, a raising of the eyebrows, a tilt of the head.

My first impressions were that she's such a flirt. But on second viewing, I'm not so sure. HardTalk Extra isn't the kind of interview where you'd expect fierce exchanges between interviewer and subject. I suppose there's an argument for celebs-with-a-view to be challenged more rigourously by the media. When politicians take a stand, we say they're being partisan, or political. With celebs, we ascribe "fights for causes" to their names. It's also understandable, since celebrities are not accountable to us in the same way elected politicians are.

Aderonke called it anti-Western guff. It's a recurrent theme in her interviews, she resents the portrayal of Africa as Conrad's Dark Continent, or the Kiplingesque, White Man's Burden. During the course of the interview, she once again champions the African middle class, and reminds the world that like life still goes on for all those poor Nigerians and Africans the West is trying to save. I've always taken issue with this point of view, the middle/upper class Nigerian view that they are the average Nigerian. They are the ones returning to work in Nigeria, and imploring their friends to go back, because "Naija has improved, oh!", or "mehn, life in Naija is sweet". Improved? Sweet? Who for? Not the properly average man, woman, and child on the street. They don't have connections to government, or the financial institutions so beloved of our people, or the telecommunications industry which is the one and only beacon of anything improved in Nigeria.

Middle class Nigerian arrive in the country, and get into a chauffeur driven air-conditioned car. They see Nigeria through the prism of their car window. There's nothing average about this experience. In the same vein, it's these same middle class people who watch cable and don't recognise the West's portrayal of their continent. She says that watching coverage of Africa might lead one to think that Africans are stupid. Well, Chimamanda, quite often, Africans are stupid. I'm a journalist, and I don't think (the BBC's) coverage of Africa is biased, lacking context, or lacking balance. News organisations only report newsworthy items, we don't make up the news. If we see African children slaughtering each other in brutal civil wars, or sitting around with flies on their faces and protruding kwashiorkor bellies, then we will report it. The same way we will report brutal civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, or Shia death squads and Sunni insurgents in Iraq. Chimamanda is asking us to treat Africa more leniently.

We did an item at work once, to see if we could compare the difference between Africa's coverage of itself and the West's coverage of Africa. It was just after the Ghanaian president, John Kufuor, said the West should stop banging on about Africa's exclusive marriage to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and instead talk about good African news. Guess what. Africa knows it's backyard is filthy, and reports accordingly. If I can dig up the item, I will do so and post it up.

It's unfortunate that all people will think about Chimamanda as interview subject is her being a flirt. A friend of mine did say, though, that even she would flirt with Gavin Esler if he was interviewing her. I don't think she means any harm, and I don't think it's intentional. And for those reasons, "allow her".

Chimamanda on HardTalk Extra

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been on HardTalk Extra with Gavin Esler. I'll reserve my judgement for later. In the meantime, enjoy. Item starts at 2minutes in:

Loosening of the noose

The British media has been agog with news of a blog post by Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman, where he sounds the death knell for the tie. "Is it time for Newsnight men to stop wearing ties? It has always been an utterly useless part of the male wardrobe," he says. Too bloody right. Such a statement from such a prominent news figure is music to my ears. In fact it almost sounds like a marriage proposal from Paxo, and I'm tempted to shout "Yes, Jeremy, yes. I will marry you!"

The reaction has been quite mixed, with most still in an inexplicable love-in with the corporate noose. The FT (quelle surprise) thinks the tie will continue to strangle us. Nick Foulkes in the Telegraph is another man in favour of the tie. Philip Norman in the Daily Mail, yes, you guessed it, wants us to keep wearing them. Charlie Porter, an associate editor of GQ, is more ambiguous, but seems to be another tie-tan. And, the Indy, does what it always does by doing the opposite to everyone else, and choosing to not give an opinion this time, but print a Q&A. Jon Snow of Channel 4 news supports Paxo, and this isn't the first time they've had to deal with the issue of the dreaded neckwear.

I detest ties. I think I have 4, or perhaps 3. I've worn a tie only once in the last couple of years. And that was because I was appearing on television, and I felt compelled for some ridiculous reason, to look presentable. I don't wear ties to interviews, and haven't worn a tie to an interview since 2003. I cut my hair, wore a suit, polished my nails, bleached my teeth, plucked my nose hairs, and didn't get the job. Since then, I've had much more success attending interviews looking like the Ghost of Christmas Past. More often these days, I wear an African shirt.

One of the main reasons I wear what I wear to interviews and work, is because I can get away with it. In my early days as freelance journalist, I remember being dressed to the nines for a meeting with Channel 4 executives. I looked dapper in a suit, black shirt, and polished shoes, but didn't wear a tie. Neglecting my tie was my way of being an eccentric media type. I walked into the office, and I was the only person wearing a suit. The others wore slacks, jeans, t-shirt, nothing remotely formal. And that was the start of me attending meetings sans cravate.

Ties, for me, represent the noose of the corporate world. And I refuse to spend my life going to work in a noose. The symbolism is too strong to ignore. The tie feeds into the stereotype that people in 9-to-5s are doing dead-end jobs which are stifling. One hops on the tube every morning to make money for the Man, and then have the Man metaphorically choking you with his filthy blood, sweat, and tears drenched hands - in the form of a tie. Why would I want to put myself through that?

The idea that people who wear ties these days exude an air of gravitas is an old school mindset. Andrew Neil, wears a tie when presenting This Week on BBC1 on Thursday evenings, but wears a tie when presenting the Daily Politics in the daytime. The tone of the programmes are different - DP is more gladiatorial, combative fare, while TW is a jovial nudge nudge, wink wink, sofa politics programme. However, Andrew Neil is no less authoritave for not wearing a tie on TW. There are people who think that drafting in Jeremy Vine to present Panaroma is a typical example of the BBC chasing ratings, and attempting to sex up its current affairs programming. But Jeremy Vine used to present on Newsnight, and has long been a "serious" journalist. The open neck shirts he wears on on the programme should be, and are no barrier to serious news and current affairs.

Why do I wear African shirts to work? Why not? In West Africa, the last time I checked, people wore African shirts. It is our attire. When the colonists came to Africa, I don't remember them converting and wearing boubous or kaftans. Instead, they enforced (I can think of no milder word), suits, and the worst sin of all, khaki. Of all the fabrics available to the cotton growing colonists, they made Africans wear khaki... I'd prefer they apologised for that even before apologising for the Empire. When the Brits were in Rome i.e. Africa, they didn't do as the Romans did. And as such, convention alone is too weak a reason to compel me to wear non-African attire to work as a rule. Of course I don't wear African shirts all the time, and that is just a matter of categorising formal and informal wear, appropriateness for the time of the day etc.

Another important nub of the argument is that I work in radio. So in keeping with the saying, "a face for radio", perhaps I have a wardrobe for radio. What would I do if I had to appear on television regularly, a la Paxo? Interestingly, I have thought about this before, thus, the African Shirt would still reign supreme. But, it would have to prove its versatility. African shirts might not be suitable for television, because the patterns aren't good for video cameras and create a sort of hallucinatory Magic Eye-type autostereogram (which I've never been able to see). The problem, therefore, is practicality. I would wear simpler and well defined patterns which wouldn't require a strobe warning before I went on air.

If all else fails, I'd be willing to make a deal with the Man. Which brings us back to ties. So, if I did have to wear ties, then I'll be donning Jon Snow style expressive (read flamboyant) ties. I'd simply wear aso oke and kente cloth ties. Except that the flamboyance of the ties (by British standards) could detract from what I'm actually saying, hence, sapping all my so called gravitas. Ah, well. You pays your money, and you wears your shirt.

Don't even ask what I'd do with the hair...

Alan is free!

I woke up this morning to hear that Alan Johnston has been released. Champagne corks have been popping in the newsroom this afternoon. We're all genuinely elated. Excuse me while I kiss this guy, kiss the sky...

Al Jazeera passes first test.

The assassination of Pierre Gemayel, sad news though it is, has been proven that Al Jazeera can tango with the best of the West. I was down to do the bulletin at 1500hrs, and everything was going swimmingly. But this is live news, where bombs are always going off, planes are always crashing, and treaties are always being signed. It was about 1420hrs, so I figured I had enough time. Ordinarily, I'd have put in a story saying "some news just in", followed by a couple of lines. With forty minutes to go, there'd definitely be a proper story ready to go in.

As is always the way with live news, stories were being written as we were going on air. The idea is for everything to mimic a swan: gliding gracefully above water, paddling furiously underneath. The last time I remember having an incredible breaking story was when North Korea tested its nuclear device. That was about 0350hrs in the morning, ten minutes before my bulletin. Again, graceful swan. Enough about my silly bulletin. Al Jazeera.

In the first hour after the story broke, of all the 24hr news channels, only Al Jazeera had a correspondent on the ground. Rula Amin (poached from CNN) was there with a camera, uplink and all. BBC News24 had Fergal Keane in the studio, giving context as someone who knows Beirut and Lebanese politics. He was probably there as a day reporter, as he'd done a piece on Kagame being charged with bringing down Habyarimana's plane (the spark for the Rwandan genocide). BBC World (we have both at work) went to Ian Pannell, Middle East analyst, in Jerusalem. Sky brought up Dominic Waghorn in Jerusalem as well. CNN had a Fouad Siniora (Lebanese PM) adviser on the phone, and then went to Jim Clancy, the former Beirut bureau chief, who was in Sao Paulo.

For some reason, Kim Ghattas, who has done a sterling job in Beirut was in Damascus, covering the Syria-Iraq relations restoration. She was probably covering for David Loyn, who's normally in Syria, but is in Iraq, probably giving Hugh Sykes a break. I don't know whether the Beeb provided official cover for Kim Ghattas, but Newsnight's Tim Whewell turned up in Beirut less than two hours later.

Al Jazeera was also the only channel that had any archive footage of Gemayel, all the others ran pictures, and videos of the holey windows of Mr Gemayel's car. The man who appeared to be supplying all the news organisations with on the ground news though, was the Indy's Middle East reporting giant, Robert Fisk. A call went out from our newsroom to Mr Fisk, who was actually in Beirut. Newshour had him live, and I think one of the BBC's news channels also had him. Meanwhile at the UN, the moustachioed John Bolton was giving an impassioned and impromptu press conference. Mark Seddon was reporting for Al Jazeera, Laura Trevelyan for the BBC, and the Beeb also had Jonathan Beale at the State Department.

Why does it matter how Al Jazeera did this story? Because the Middle East is still the cauldron of the world, a cauldron that draws the world's foremost power (the US) into its eye. Whenever a Middle East story breaks, Al Jazeera will become the channel of choice. The developing world, is where they want to report, the "global south". Incidentally, the Director General of Al Jazeera is on Hardtalk today, watch here. The murder of Pierre Gemayel may well precipitate a civil war in Lebanon, something the region, let alone the country cannot afford after last year's Israel-Hezbollah conflict. Precisely the premise for Friday's Unreported World. Depressingly prescient?

The Chelsea syndrome might be beginning to show - while CNN, Sky, and believe it or not, the BBC, have to tighten their belts on expenditure, Al Jazeera presumably has a bottomless pocket of oil money. Add to the mix, Mourinhoesque good management, et voila...