Abstract
The Congolese media whose history
lays back to the fifties is a special press because since it was born, it has
been, and with no doubt, remains an instrument of political and religious
propaganda or simply public relations bulletins. Directly linked to political
parties before independence, the press media, created and placed under the
control of different political systems of that time, benefited from public
funding (or from the state party) to print more than 10,000 copies for a daily.
In this experience, « Les Dépêches de Brazzaville »
newspaper is the only successful case, highly and successfully funded by the
current political system. Thus we can say, because of companies'nationalization
and direct administration that results from the information monopoly held by
the State, private initiative, in the press in particular, will be hindered for
a long time. Only the Catholic two-weekly newspaper of the Father De Gall (La
Semaine Africaine), enjoying a sort of religious immunity, will be spared from
the gagging of the press. For the Congolese media from 1960 to 1990, everything
depended on the State : Editorials where censorship commission could be found,
editorial line (usually Marxist or revolutionary) where all charges were fully
supported by the public treasury. The mass media could thus simply generate
ideas and write reports that would please political leaders, without ever
worrying about profits or losses. Today, it is quite the opposite. Following
the devaluation of the CFA franc currency in 1994, the rising of free
enterprise, but also the progressive political maturity, the disengagement of
the State requires the Congolese media to reconcile expenses and profits to
produce the information, because the press has to stop being an instrument to
the service of Government so as to set itself up as « guarantors (by means
of media pluralism) and regulators (as a consequence the freedom of information
and as a place of debate) of democracy » in other words, to rise to become
a lobby, but also an enterprise that can make a profit. But how can we then
achieve this if the issue of media funding for most of our newspapers, or our
media, is not resolved ? Thus, the Congolese press bloated scrapes liberalized
since 1991. There is a circulation that curiously generally decreased while the
number of titles is growing. Although dynamic, the press is confined in large
cities where it is easily to public information policy that declined today on a
spectacular registry is proposed to capture their attention (this is the logic
of the economy attention). However, the predominance of political issues of the
Congolese press is mainly due to the fact that despite the dedication of the
freedom of information, this press is subject to economic powers (public
institutions, private companies, non-governmental organizations) its main
providers of advertisements and commercials. This is a press that we are
dealing domesticated in the Republic of Congo ; press enjoying independence in
multi dependence (dependence of economic powers, paper industries, printing).
Hence the importance of the media for editors to find viable business models
for their companies and the necessity for the state to finance the press in
order to protect news diversity or pluralism and promote democratic values.
Key-words Congolese newspaper, media funding, business models,
news diversity or pluralism
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