Telling The True African Story: African Media's Job, not CNN's

I have been following tweets from the recently trending #SomeoneTellCNN and in truth, some of them are just too amusing. The issue in the centre of it might have ignited some cheeky comments after it but at the heart of it all is an ongoing concern for the continent of Africa.
As US president, Barack Obama prepares to visit his father's country, Kenya, a CNN reporter wrote an article on the security concerns of the US about the visit. The opening of this article had described Kenya as a "terrorist hotbed" and it sparked a flood of vitriol from Kenyans and for understandable reasons. It read, " President Barack Obama is not just heading to his father's homeland , but to a hotbed of terror ," they followed it up with a chyron on television that looked similar.
The obvious displeasure of Kenyans and Africans at large in this is a subject matter that has been with us as far back as the origin of Africa's relation with the rest of the world: misrepresenting of Africa in the global media. When these things happen, whenever I observe occasional representations of this issue, as I do with other issues, I ask myself two central questions. Why did it happen is the first question, and it leads me to the second; who should prevent it or address it?
First of all, there is no way of evaluating Africa's representation to the world without being a little ashamed of what our society has labeled itself. The world sees Africa mostly as the dark continent where bad news are naturally birthed. This is so because this is the image western media paints and this is so because they (western media) do not owe it to Africa to present them sweetly to the world.
To be fair to CNN and their from friends in the west who will be happier to address Africa as a terrorist hotbed than as the new home of economic growth, I have to admit that the need for their own business health thumps the need for Africa's pride. Corporate media houses are nothing but news retailers. To be profitable, they need to retail only the news that sells. The headlines, "ISIS-linked terror group runs rampage in northern Kenya" and "Boko Haram kills scores in Northeast Nigerian town" will sell better than "Polio is reported to be eradicated in Nigeria" or "Public health enhanced in Botswana".
These headlines won't flood in page views and high ratings which is what media businesses are all about.
We cannot continue to rely on the rest of the world to help us tell our stories then attack them when they don't tell it the way we want. Media agencies which are indigenous to Africa should be primarily responsible for telling our true stories to the world and build a better image of Africa in the minds of the global audience. To be able to achieve this, African media houses must work hard to create a global platform of audience that is massive and influential while being objective. I am not suggesting they begin to paint untrue pictures of Africa or mislead the world about Africa in any way, all I'm saying is that they have to begin to broadcast those news about Africa that western media would consider not profitable enough and try as much as possible to correct the negative and false impression western media creates about Africa.
To do this, they on their own have to be as powerful and authoritative on their own right. This means commanding just as much audience and being more trustworthy as a news source. It would obviously take years to attain that level on a global scale but we have to begin now. Currently, I can't see any African media empire that comes anywhere near CNN and Aljazeera in clout but with modern day universality of ICT, challenging them in ideology and opinion won't be that mountainous.
I however have to correct a notion that might be brewing in my reader's mind right now. When I say "African indigenous media houses" I am certainly not talking about State-run media houses. We have seen those aplenty and have seen how they failed to perform in this regard. Instead of seeking a global audience to educate about their home country, they get more concerned about publishing propaganda and false reports to deceive the local public about the activities of the regime in power. That was the state of African broadcasting in the early decades of the Republicanization of African States. Sadly, modern day independent media in Africa seem to have inherited that spirit and are hence lost in a myopic enclave of local political trumpet blowing rather than tell the true stories of their people to the world in an objective manner that makes them appealing.
It therefore has to be said to my Kenyan brothers and the rest of Africa that CNN and the western media do not owe Africa the responsibility to tell African stories the way it suits us, our own media houses do. This tells us that inside the belly of every single tweet in the #SomeoneTellCNN trend, there should be #SomeoneTellAfricanMadia awareness.