Club-K.net regurgitates imbalanced Financial Times article

It was interesting to note the glee with which the website Club-K.net reported on an article entitled ‘Why the west loves a kleptocrat’ which was published in the Financial Times earlier this week.
It was penned by journalist Simon Kuper and hails the research of Oxford political scientist Ricardo Soares de Oliveira and his new book Magnificent and Beggar Land: Angola Since the Civil War.
Club-K.net positively revels as it reports the findings of the article, claiming that ‘Angolan leaders to form an elite indifferent to the poverty of the population’.
The website, which carries the claim of being an Angolan news service, quotes heavily from both the article and de Oliveira’s book.
It covers the supposed tipping habits of apparent oligarchs in Angola, before criticising foreign investment and influence in the oil-rich country in the south-west of Africa.
A lack of desire for change from Western governments is also mentioned, before quoting from an interview by de Oliveira in which the author criticises the lack of improvement in the country, despite double-digit economic growth throughout much of the last decade.
Unfortunately, articles such as this on websites such as Club-K.net are pretty much the norm these days.
The article does not even attempt to produce a balanced argument or debate, but instead simply cherry-picks and lists the points made by an author with a clear agenda and then makes no attempt to counter them to form a balanced view.
There is no mention of approaching a government spokesperson for a right to reply – an industry standard for even the most rudimentary practitioners of journalism.
The fact that Angola has marketed its natural commodities such as oil, diamonds and other resources to the rest of the world to achieve double-digit growth over the last decade is a remarkable achievement, yet it is fairly glossed over in this piece with the most cursory of mentions.
Ultimately, this does not come as a surprise.
Angola was subject to an intense and protracted civil war which lasted almost 27 years.
Starting in 1975, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) battled each other for supremacy, with the former eventually coming out on top.
That came off the back of a brutal but ultimately successful war of independence against former rulers Portugal, so the last 13 years have actually brought comparative calm and continuity to Angola.
But deep political rifts remain from those not happy with the new Angola, and it explains why websites such as Club-K.net and Maka Angola publish such impartial and unbalanced articles.
Maka Angola is led by journalist Rafael Marques, a long-standing and vocal critic of the current government who is standing trial accused of defamation.
Club-K.net criticises what it calls government propaganda, which it claims has been in existence for the past 13 years – dating back to the end of the civil war.
The lack of balance in articles such as that mentioned on Club-K.net highlights just how opposed various groups are to the current ruling hierarchy, and how far they will go to criticise it, all without proposing constructive and balanced ideas.