By Archbishop Thabo Makgoba
As we observed the second week of Lent, and as the Bishops of the
Province met in Episcopal Synod this week to reflect and speak to
church and society, our lections demanded of us that we be alert,
that we take seriously how our behaviours affect others and, when
they are not conducive to abundant life in God, that we amend them.
In the latest of my series of reflections on the state of
society from a faith perspective, I examine how the media is taking
stock of its role and measuring up to what we require of it in our
current circumstances.
It is an unfortunate reflection on the quality of debate in
Parliament that real political life in South Africa is to be found on
the streets and in the media. Three decades into democracy, as we
gear up for our seventh national and provincial elections, we need to
ask: are the media facilitating or hindering the growth of democracy
in our country?
A decade ago I was privileged to serve under the former Chief
Justice, Pius Langa, as a commissioner of the Press Freedom
Commission, which was appointed to recommend how best to ensure that
the press adheres to the highest ethical standards.
So to help answer my question on the media’s performance, I have
solicited the views of a range of media professionals – former
editors of print and broadcast media, journalism academics, board
members and ombuds – and tested them against the demands
articulated by the commission.
In the commission’s report, we defined our primary objective as
being “To ensure press freedom in support of enhancing our
democracy which is founded on human dignity, the achievement of
equality and the advancement of human rights and freedom..."
We were of course guided by the principles of the Constitution, which
guarantees freedom of expression, including media freedom and the
rights of everyone to impart information or ideas.
Now the Constitution does not include in its definition of these
freedoms the requirement that speech or private publications need to
be fair or balanced, or even that they be truthful. We are free, for
example, to promote propaganda in support of our ideas. In recent
years, as well as those publications which print propaganda, we have
seen the phenomenal growth of social media outlets, which – when
used well – have helped ordinary people to realise the
Constitution's promise of free speech. (In the church, for example,
our members don't hesitate to hold us to account on Twitter and
Facebook.)
But propaganda, like the fake news and toxic debate we see on social
media, is of no value in promoting human dignity, equality and the
advancement of human rights. Nor is it of any use at all in helping
voters provide the reliable and truthful information they need to
make informed choices at election time.
Fortunately, we have in South Africa private and public media
committed under the codes of conduct of the Press Council and the
Broadcasting Complaints Commission to publishing truthful information
and diverse views. When operating at their best, they are
independently edited by experienced professional journalists who are
neither mere tools of their bosses and shareholders, nor hijacked by
politicians.
Journalists with inflated opinions of their influence are often
brought back to earth by research which says that what they publish
rarely changes the minds of their readers and viewers. That said, the
media set agendas: they tell us what to think about, how long we
should be thinking and talking about something and they can influence
how we think about something.
Ideally, they hold those in power accountable and enable democracy by
giving voters the information they need to become, as Mamphela
Ramphele has said, “active citizens” instead of “passive
subjects”. Unlike newspapers during the apartheid era, which were
often banned and always constrained by more than 100 laws, they can
promote transparency to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not
repeated.
In short, the media in South Africa have demonstrated that they have
the power to influence individual beliefs, attitudes, behaviours,
choices and decisions. But in one area that is crucial to the
effective growth of democracy in South Africa, they fall short: most
of our print, online and broadcast outlets speak to or reflect the
interests of social and political elites.
In the Press Freedom Commission's 2012 report, we noted that
“Diversity of content in the media is essential to ensure that the
voices and opinions of all South Africans are heard." When it
came to print journalism, we added: "It has been noted that the
voices of some sections of the population are seldom heard in
newspapers. The increased urbanisation of the print media has
resulted from the concentration of both advertising and editorial
imperatives on the large urban areas where larger newspapers are
situated. Even national newspapers focus more on urban news. This
results in fewer voices of rural people being published.”
Has the situation improved since then? There have been some positive
developments: online or print outlets financed by philanthropic
foundations and trusts which respect the independence of editors, and
which – within their limited means – try to publish news about
those otherwise ignored.
But traditional print media is in grave financial straits. Newspaper
circulations have plummeted in the past decade and although there is
growth in online news, it competes with the unreliable content seen
on social media. Reporters who continue to travel to smaller towns
and rural areas deserve praise and support but many papers cover
their lack of ability to put reporters on the ground by running
opinion pieces from politicians or academics.
With some exceptions, the media are not good at covering those whom
they do not see in front of them – the 40 percent or so who still
live in former “homeland” areas. And if you came to South Africa
from another planet, you might think you had arrived on another
continent, so little news from the rest of Africa – even
crisis-hit, war-torn regions – would you see or hear.
The picture in broadcasting is not much better.
A former media executive who helped launch a new commercial broadcast
venture tells me that at the outset their stated aim was to give a
voice to the marginalised. But within months, the “market” taught
them that it was not the marginalised, or even “the workers”, who
bought new cars or bakkies – if the station wanted to attract
advertising from businesses to sustain itself, it had to avoid
antagonising them, so ended up paying lip service to the poor.
For its part, public broadcasting is not realising its full
potential. Another former executive gave me chapter and verse of how
the SABC’s transformation in the early 1990s from a state
broadcaster into a public one has soured.
Under the visionary leadership of the late Zwelakhe Sisulu, the SABC
began building a new, inclusive public broadcaster which aimed to
develop a professional and fair news service that reached the poorest
of communities around the country. But two crucial developments
served to shift their focus.
First, political interference began to take place after the 2004
election when, for example, the news department began to spend vast
sums, not on getting reporters to rural areas or uncovering problems
with poor township schools, but instead on covering senior
politicians on myriad overseas trips. Censorship was reinstated, with
prominent experts on Zimbabwe banned from the airwaves. Then
financial disaster hit during the reign of the political deployee,
Hlaudi Motsoeneng.
I speak frequently to SABC journalists who are consummate
professionals, and broadcasting experts acknowledge that the SABC is
challenged not only by poor governance and corruption – its onerous
public service mandate is largely unfunded and so it has to rely on
advertising for most of its revenue.
But its response to the financial crisis was to undermine the reforms
of the 1990s. An example of this can be seen in radio, the medium
which can do the most to represent and reflect the interests of the
poor.
With about 37 million people relying on it as their main source of
news, radio has more listeners than print media has readers, reaching
every corner of the country, both urban and rural. In the 1990s, the
SABC established an integrated news team that could report all the
news to every station in each of our 11 official languages.
But in response to the financial crisis, news and current affairs
programmes in prime-time slots were cancelled and the time was given
to talk shows. Call-in shows can be deceptive. Listeners may think
they are getting “news” but phone-ins are not the same as news
reports, which to stand up to scrutiny, have to be verified,
balanced, and fair.
Commercial stations, whether private or public, generally fill their
time with call-in shows because “talk is cheap and news is
expensive.” In effect, listeners provide free content. It is
expensive to send reporters out to far-flung, or even local areas.
As a result of this change of focus, it is effectively the elites
whose voices get heard: listeners with air-time and the opportunity
to call in, politicians, academics and business leaders.
Journalism
is a key and central feature of a democracy. Without it, leaders are
largely left unaccountable and the voices of the poor are unheard. We
have been blessed in South Africa with a free and often robust media
which have done an outstanding job in recent years of exposing
corruption and misrule, as well as a judiciary with integrity that
has withstood political pressures.
But right now, and especially leading up to the May 29 elections, the
greatest challenge facing the media is to step away from being an
interlocutor between the middle classes – both old and new elites –
and reflect those who are still struggling to be citizens.
