SA: Mbeki calls for world media not to abandon African bureaus

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South African president Thabo Mbeki called for Western Media not to abandon its African bureaus in the face of technological change and staff cut backs.

Opening the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum , today in Cape Town, Mr Mbeki urged news media organisations to tell the 'African story' by getting reporters on the ground.

"We in Africa do benefit from criticism, but we do ask that it should be based on accurate information and should be properly contextualised," he said.

"We also know that the amount of foreign coverage in much of the world media has been dropping over the years. For instance, the December 2006 issue of Global Journalists says that the percentage of front-page international stories in the US media fell by 13 per cent between 1977 and 2004.

"One might ask; have world events become less significant? The evidence also suggests that as the news media has transformed themselves to compete with new technologies, foreign bureaus have suffered significant cutbacks.

"We appreciate that there are limits to keeping many news bureaus running in a huge and geographically challenging continent as ours. We appreciate also that, rather than have numbers of bureaus abroad, publications may very well rely more on single correspondents to cover regions.

"Nevertheless, we would still appeal: 'come and see as much as you can'."

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