PublicSectorMedia andthecredibility criSiSinSenegal: National television in a socialist government (1960-2000)

Abstract

Based on the principles that underlie press freedom and the public service of the media, this article is a critical contribution to what was commonly called the “Senegalese political model”, considered as one of the few models of democracy in Francophone Africa during the first three decades of independence (1960 - 1990). As far as the media are concerned, this research shows that during that period, national television was not actually run more democratically than those of other countries of this part of the continent, then under civil or military dictatorship backed by a single party. Just like Zaire national television under President Mobutu, the Senegalese one was also a formidable tool of propaganda, a “mirror of State” and a distorting prism of the society. As a result, the crisis that stroke the Senegalese postcolonial State at the turn of the 1980s did not spare “its” television.