By Thomas Gilchrist

Dakar, Senegal

Right now, I am watching RTS 1, the main government-managed television network in Senegal.  I wanted to watch Freedomland, starring Samuel L and Julianne Moore, but my younger sister disagreed, and changed the channel to RTS.

“The main thing about government-controlled media,” said one Dakar-stationed foreign journalist, “Is that it is very boring.”

And it is.  Very boring.  A lot of this is the fault of M. Pres. Abdoulaye Wade, who he himself happens to be very boring.  This in and of itself is not necessarily a problem, but His Excellency, M. Wade is the star, co-star, and conflicted love interest of RTS.  

If Wade, were more like Hulk Hogan, or Jerry Seinfield, or Wayne Gretzky, RTS would have a legitimate chance at being a decently entertaining channel, kind of like watching the British Parliament scream at each other and jump up and down on the BBC.  But the 82 year-old M. Wade is more like a retired Ferengai who listens to live performances of Senegal’s national anthem, “Pincez Tous vos Koras, Frappez les Balafons” on various air strips.

What is interesting to me is how government-controlled media in Senegal compares to agenda-controlled media in the United States.  In the US, government-controlled media simply would not fly.  We would call them out on their bull-shit.  We cringe enough at the commercials seeking to gain volunteers for our military, and I can remember a commercial advocating support for The Wall separating the US and Mexico, which featured M. Pres. Bush riding on an ATB that made me scream and vomit at the same time. People react strongly enough to American Government commercials, and the response to an entire government channel in the US would be interesting, to say the least.

But in the US, we have agendas.  Everyone knows Fox News subscribes to a conservative slant, but people consider it more of a novelty than misguided journalistic principles.  We recognize it, we understand Fox News is owned by the conservative entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch, and we process accordingly the information we gleam from Fox News.  The same goes for the liberal-leaning CNN.

I suppose the thing is, that not everyone does take Fox News with a grain of salt, that there are Americans who consume its broadcasts at face value, simply because they don’t understand, or no one has ever told them, that it is more accurate to take socially conservative broadcasts with some liberal seasoning, and liberal broadcasts with some conservative sauce on the side.

In America, however, you are able to choose, and our liberally and conservatively-slanted private media is an extension of our two-party system.  But in Senegal, it isn’t conservative-liberal as much as it is whoever’s in charge-the rest of the scrambling masses.  The issue is that not everyone gets to choose.

Access to RTS is fairly universal in Senegal, either via television or the radio, but other perspectives come as a bit of a luxury, a luxury not all can afford.  For some, whatever RTS broadcasts is definitive, if, for no other reason, they simply don’t have access to any other media outlet.

People here, however, don’t even realize that RTS is a government-controlled network, just as some Americans (unbelievably) don’t realize that Fox News presents a conservative slant.  “Is RTS a government-controlled channel?” I asked my perfectly-educated, perfectly-cultured host mother.  “RTS is the national channel, but it is not controlled by the government,” she said.

It’s not that aspects of Senegal’s media aren’t free, but that people are yet to reject the the spoon-fed information the government gives them, and if and when they do, that grain of salt will have to be a decision they make as a society.

So for now, I’m going to sit here and watch the President listen to “Pincez Tous vos Koras, Frappez les Balafons” and shake hands with what appears to be around 100 people an hour, and I’m going to smile and nod when the picture of him hanging on the outside of his Ford Excursion going through the flooded parts of Dakar makes front-page news three days in a row in  le Soleil, the main government-controlled newspaper.

Who knows?  It could become exciting.  Maybe Hulk Hogan will make a cameo.  

flickr.com image courtesy of duram_friedman