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The youth of my generation who will not yield to the madness being championed by David Cameron will one day have our children learning the history of a man called Col. Muammar al-Qathafi. That history will be battered in much the same way the man who stood up against imperial forces was battered. Like a woman who brings termite-infested firewood to the house, the former Libyan leader�s senseless intoxication with power invited hungry fowls to a feast. And they came with bomb-spitting jets. They came to destroy. They came to kill. And, perhaps, to steal. They came in the name of �protecting civilians.� But when it was clear that Qathafi�s forces were too powerless to pose any threat, the bombardment continued till Qathafi�s murder. Perhaps, they came to finish the unfinished business of US President Ronald Reagan, who had set out to kill �the mad dog of the Middle East� in 1986. That was when the bombing of a Berlin nightclub was blamed on Libyan agents. The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon left my head throbbing in an attempt to find the meaning of what he said of Qathafi�s death: �This is only the end of the beginning.� For close to 48 hours I tried in vain to make meaning of the statement. I even convinced myself that the man might have had a slip of tongue. Or a �slip of brain� as the late Efo Kodjo Mawugbe would put it. But I somewhat tried to interpret it the way I understood it. �This is only the end of the beginning.� The beginning of what? Every person, organisation or nation has their beginning. Our beginnings are the foundations on which we lay our blocks of development and progress. For Libyans, that beginning has been erased. Their enviable architecture and infrastructure have been reduced to mounds of rubble. The security of the nation has been destabilised because potent ammunitions have been handed to anybody who cared for them. The whereabouts of national army and armoury is a source of concern. So the beginning has ended, and Libyans must brace themselves to start from Ground Zero. Libyans are not the only people who will bear the brunt of the collective betrayal of Qathafi. The African Union is better of being abolished because it has outlived its usefulness. The role played by the African media and journalists during and after the destruction Libya is, however, the reason for this article. The morning after the murder of Qathafi, almost all Ghanaian newspapers carried that story on their front pages. By the time I finished scanning through the papers, my heart was heavy with grief and I shared my disappointment with my Facebook friends: �The Daily Graphic of all papers has used a BBC report as its front page story,� I wrote. �And that�s what all other newspapers have done, culling their reports from the Western Media. It is clear that the BBC report was written in London. They viewed the same footages we viewed on Al-Jazeera and the rest. We will then turn round and blame the Western media for misrepresenting Africa.� I did not mention the Daily Graphic out of malice. The Daily Graphic is the nation�s leading and most reliable newspaper. If all other newspapers should fail us, the Daily Graphic must not. But this did not go down well with a Daily Graphic reporter who saw my Facebook status. Later that day, he walked me out of the Daily Graphic newsroom even before I had time to give the features editor the article I had promised her. I tried to explain but he would not listen. �Do you expect us to send reporters to Libya to cover that story?� he asked angrily. Another reporter, who quickly logged on to Facebook to see what I had written agreed with him. �Azure, as for this one you�re guilty.� I had no option but to close my laptop and embarrassingly �leave the newsroom!� as he ordered. No one feels comfortable when rebuked. But as Ghandi put it, �an honest disagreement is a good sign of progress.� For someone learning to establish a career in journalism, I don�t want to see the media in Ghana lose their essence. And I believe one way journalists can improve upon standards and enhance the freedom we enjoy is to encourage self-censorship and adopt a peer review mechanism sort of. This must not only come from grey-haired journalism professors or our journalism textbooks from the West. Qathafi�s story on the BBC website, which the Daily Graphic published, probably unedited, was not written by a reporter in Libya. About 20% of the story quoted sources from mobile phone footages on Al-Jazeera and from the AFP. The remaining 80% of the story was brief background of the war and then Qathafi�s profile. Besides, the news of Qathafi�s death broke on Thursday noon. So on Friday it no longer made news sense for our newspapers to scream �Qathafi Killed!� We all knew that. Our newspapers would have helped the reader get fresh angles, an insight into the incidents with analyses from international relations experts, and perhaps, something on Qathafi�s relationship with Ghana. After recognising the legitimacy of the Libyan rebels, the Ghanaian government should have been asked about its opinion on the gruesome murder of Qathafi. But we allowed the West to tell our story and to once again rob us of power. �Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person,� observes Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian writer. ��Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story.� The BBC story which the Daily Graphic published word for word, as usual, pointed out the flaws of Qathafi such as the Lockerbie bombings: �He invented his own system of government, supported radical armed groups as diverse as the ANC of South Africa�.� A Ghanaian reporter would not have described the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which fought for democracy in South Africa as a �radical armed group.� The Western media may describe it as such because until 2008, one of the world�s most respected statesmen, Nelson Mandela, was still considered a terrorist by the United States. Nelson Mandela was on America�s terror list needed a special waiver before he could enter the US. The ANC was also considered a terrorist group. And that�s the point the Daily Graphic helped the BBC to emphasize. �African journalists and editors must share the blame. We�re unimaginative and lazy,� Ghanaian journalist, Kwaku Sakyi-Addo, observed in an article three years ago. �We�ll go the websites of the same international media we complain about, and happily copy their reports of stories that are within our physical reach and paste them in our media. How is that a story datelined Accra is sourced from CNN or BBC?� I first came across this when the March 15, 2007 edition of the Daily Graphic published a story headlined: �Tema Youth get 3-year CAF ban� and the source was BBC. Again, when President Mills interacted with journalists at the Castle early this year, the Daily Guide newspaper published a story the following day headlined: �I won�t send troops to Ivory Coast � Mills.� And the source was BBC. The Ghanaian media could have done better with Qathafi�s story. It is said that if you hate the duiker, there is one thing you must not fail to acknowledge � its swiftness. Yes, the dictator had his flaws but he also had his strengths. Though rush and irrational, he had the cause of the continent at heart. He helped many African countries to develop. He also helped South Africa to fight apartheid, one of the worst crimes against humanity after the slave trade. It is not for nothing that Nelson Mandela once told the West that �those who feel irritated by our friendship with President Qathafi can go jump in the pool.� �The independent-minded Qathafi had some positive contribution to Libya, and I believe, as well as Africa and the Third World,� remarked President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. �We should also remember, as part of this independent-mindedness, he expelled British and American military bases from Libya.� Before Qathafi assumed power, foreign oil companies dictated the price of Libya�s oil to the advantage of their nations. Qathafi demanded an end to the exploitation and threatened to shut oil production if the companies disagreed. �People who have lived without oil for 5,000 years can live without it again for a few years in order to attain their legitimate rights,� he said. And he won. Libya is said to be the first developing country to have majority share of revenue from its oil production. But that came at a cost � an accumulated hatred that would define his end. Qathafi wasn�t a saint but balancing his story would have helped readers to understand why Western leaders celebrated the humiliation and murder of a fellow president. All sides of the story would have informed the ordinary reader why the UN Security Council still does not see the atrocities against unarmed civilians in Syria but was quick to act on Libya. After every war, it is the story of the victor that is often heard. But the loser also has a version that must equally be told. The African media could have re-echoed what Obierika told the District Commissioner the other day of Okonkwo�s suicide. �That man was one of the greatest men in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself and now he will be buried like a dog.� Things have, indeed, fallen apart! Writer�s email: [email protected]