Press freedom in Africa /

The major problem with this work is that it does not advance very far from an academic exercise. The author retains too much material assembled as if meant to impress professors that she did her homework. Thus, five pages are devoted to a discussion of the four theories of the press (never relevant to the Third World when conceived in 1956, and certainly not today) and other valuable space to myopic and outdated indexes of press freedom developed in some US universities far from the African reality. There are other problems. The book is misnamed, being a treatment of press freedom in only three African countries (Kenya, Nigeria, and to a lesser extent, Ghana), and it depends too heavily upon Westerners' views of African press freedom. In some cases, quotes of these Westerners and others are stacked. Original research usually expected at the graduate school level is nonexistent. Some snippets of useful information on foreign ownership of the press, rural journalism, and criticism of Western-based development communication theorists and traditional media emerge occasionally but not often enough.-J. A. Lent, Temple University