Yacoob Abba Omar
Opening address: Sowetan's SA Press Freedom Day
19 October 1999
South African media in the new millennium
There is a generation
of us who can probably still recall the cold fear which swept
over South Africa when the banning of The World and other
publications as well as organisations was announced. I was
at high school at the time and already filled with a frustrated
anger around the killings of 1976 and 1977.
It is therefore
an honour for me to be addressing you on the 22nd
anniversary of those bannings. Anniversaries like this are
important occasions for us to ponder over the road travelled
and the journeys still to be completed.
This anniversary
occurring on the eve of the passage of the Open Democracy
Bill does have much to celebrate. Not least amongst the highlights
of 1998/1999 was the holding of our second democratic elections.
The OD Bill itself will take forward the many constitutional
and legislative guarantees which grace our statutes and Bill
of Rights.
I hope that October
19 is not characterised by a ritualistic dance of accusations
and recriminations between the media and government. It is
also my fervent hope that it will be marked by a unified commitment
to the preservation and promotion of the best of South African
journalistic traditions. Most importantly we can mark each
passing anniversary as a celebration of our democracy.
In my defence I
would like to quote respected journalist and editor James
Fallows formerly of the Atlantic Monthly and National Public
Radio who, in his book ‘Breaking the News’ described
very well how the media responds to criticism: "The first
instinct of many journalists is to cry ‘first amendment’,
which is like the military’s reflexive use of ‘national
security’ to rebut outside criticism of how it does its
work.
There are two challenges
I believe the South African media faces. If we can agree on
these problems then we can at least begin laying the basis
for a dialogue on the future of the media in this country.
If we do not address these problems today we stand the danger
of the media becoming trivialised, marginalised, and ultimately
irrelevant not through some authoritarian decree but due to
its own inertia.
The first challenge
arises from the transformation South Africa is undergoing.
Despite five years of democratic rule and transition from
apartheid, the problems of representavity (in terms of gender
an grace) and diversity continue plaguing this country’s
media.
The second is the
challenge of the emergence of the Information Age. Problems
related to this include SA’s place within the globalisation
process and the question of widening access to the benefits
of Information and Communication Technology developments.
All South Africans need to unite in marketing this country
as a good destination for investment, trade and tourists so
that we can benefit from the process of globalisation and
technological developments.
TRANSFORMING
THE SOUTH AFRICAN MEDIA
The problems with
transforming the South African media can be seen in its persistent
corporatised nature and concentrated ownership. I trust that
there is common cause on this issue.
The problem with
this is that Stockholders in publicly held media organisations
are expecting returns similar to those they’d get by
investing in industrial enterprises. And how are these returns
achieved?
- Firstly, by cutting the
cost of getting news. A local version of this was the
decision by the Independent Group to have one source of
copy for parliamentary coverage. Given that the Comtask
has estimated that 80% of political news comes from Parliament
this means that the several millions of Independent readers
would have been subjected to only one interpretation of
the news!
- Owners have defended their
shift to entertainment (celebrity news/sensationalism)
on the basis that is what viewers want. Moegsien Williams,
Editor of the Cape Argus, struck the required note when
he said: "Journalists have no need to be defensive;
they are needed to act as leaders - serving communities,
linking communities, creating new communities, and serving
democracy".
- Secondly, cutting back on
the training to be provided. Because radio, TV and the
press can all access the wire services for copy, they
no longer depend on an army of reporters. The shutting
down of training facilities or reducing training budgets
has thus been a natural course to take.
The use of these
tactics leads to homogenisation of content and what is being
referred to as "dumbing down". Issues get covered
superficially because communication is only being understood
in terms of one dimension - breadth. The additional dimension
of depth, the meaning of what is communicated, is over looked.
A public used to
a narrow range of ideas will come to regard this narrowness
as the only acceptable condition. The market place of ideas
cannot be measured by its size and technological virtuosity.
Blandness and noise do not constitute ideas and information.
When instruments of narrow ideas and triviality have sufficient
power, they drown out lesser voices and discourage thought.
Such trivialisation
and tabloidisation of issues erodes the credibility of the
media. A Gallop Poll found for e.g. in the US that reporters
were only slightly ahead of lawyers and building contractors
in honesty and integrity. Richard Reeves in his book "What
the people know: Freedom and the Press" wrote: "We
took down politicians and politics without pausing to think
that maybe we would be down with them. If we are in decline,
it is because we have fallen into the trap of ignoring what
government does and focusing on what it has done wrong".
His plea to journalists is "The issue is truth, not packaging".
The issue
of race and gender in ownership and content
The racial thread
has emerged on many occasions within the media and in debates
between Government and the media. Both Mbeki and Mandela have
been at the centre of storms caused by constructive remarks
which were misconstrued.
Les Switzer. for
example, brought a sobering realism to the debate when he
said: "As I understand Mandela’s remarks the promotion
of cultural diversity in the news staffs of the commercial
press is a necessary step in the promotion of a news agenda
that will ultimately reflect the multi-cultural and primarily
non-western society that is South Africa. The major newspapers
in South Africa have barely explored the surface of this social
reality. A culturally diverse staff will help ensure a diversified
news agenda".
ICTs AND
GLOBALISATION
As South African
we have to face up to the challenges of developments in ICT
and the process of globalisation. Last week’s Newsweek
carried a cover story on e-life - a comment on how perverse
the impact of IT has been on our lives. In looking at the
twin forces of IT development and globalisation we reminded
of the real danger of large parts of the world being reduced
to what Castells calls ‘a technological apartheid’.
By 1989 people were
already getting advise on how to deal with the stress brought
about by too much information. Wurman in ‘Information
Anxiety’ highlighted the early signs of the Information
Age as follows:
- feeling of guilt due to
the ever increasing stack of periodical waiting to be
read;
- feeling depressed because
you don’t know what all the buttons are on your VCR;
(we can now say the same thing about our cellphones)
- thinking the person next
to you understands everything you don’t;
- reacting emotionally to
information you don’t really understand - such as
not knowing what the Dow Jones really is but panicking
when you hear that it has dropped five hundred points.
Many studies show
a close relationship between IT, productivity, and competitiveness.
They also show that appropriate levels of education are essential
for the use of these technologies. But is essential that this
occurs within the right infrastructure.
In our recent strategic
planning session the GCIS developed what we refer to as a
‘niched scenario’. According to this scenario South
Africa will divided into the information haves and the information
have nots. This social underdevelopment occurs precisely at
the threshold of the potentially most promising era of human
fulfilment.
FACING THE
CHALLENGES
What are the options
available to us as South Africans? One of the first steps
in that debate is for the media to examine its own soul. The
media routinely passes up opportunities to do this. Scorn
was poured upon those who dared to engage in the truth and
reconciliation hearings on the media, while hysteria created
the HRC’s inquiry. The TRC, wrote Mandla Langa, "Opens
up the possibility (for the media) of examining their own
culpability, their own silence when they could have spoken,
when they had the requisite weapons to analyse and give society
a glimmer of light". And "If the media didn’t
know, then they have no business pretending to be the fourth
estate".
At some point the
rest of society needs to contribute to this self reflection.
I want to commend those media organisations such as SANEF,
FBJ and PMSA which met with parliament’s communications
committee. It is this dialogue of equals we need to engage
in so that we emerge with a media which collectively meets
the needs of all South Africans.
I want to touch
a debate which I know continues to split the ranks editors
- that is of corrective action.
Calls for corrective
action have engendered a debate which has split editors largely
along racial lines. Shrugging off these calls, John Patten,
the Editor of the Mercury, argued that "In terms of newspapers
viability, the market speaks more strongly than a population
that does not buy, advertise in or read newspapers."
This is a fallacious argument on two counts:
Firstly, what has
helped the existing newspapers survive is not the invisible
hand of the market forces but the helping hands of the large
corporations which allowed them to establish themselves through
the diverse resources they can mobilise to ensure the success
of their titles.
Emerging newspapers
do not have the resources to set up their own services. They
depend on large companies for repro, printing, marketing and
distribution. And where they do succeed, they cannot attract
high advertising revenues because their main readership lies
in the most impoverished areas and therefore the areas with
least disposable income making them unattractive for advertisers.
Also media ownership
includes the question of who owns paper products. Afrikaans-press
owners Sanlam have been linked to Sappi while Anglo-American
which had major media interests was linked to Mondi..
Secondly, Clive
Emdon estimated that about nine million daily and weekly newspapers
are sold each week in South Africa giving us an international
per capita rating of around 8% of the population. Emdon says
"This puts South Africa among the long list of Third
World countries with a low newspaper readership and suggests
room for diversity and enormous growth of print media".
There isn’t simply a gap in the market, there is an entire
ozone hole in which the current newspapers exist like privileged
stars serving privileged elites. The reason cannot be there
is not a market. It is because of the absence of resources
mentioned.
Media owners and
journalist alike should join the GCIS in its discussions on
how best to achieve diversity in the South African Media.
Government, in line with recommendations of Comtask is looking
into the establishment of a Media Development and Diversity
Agency. Such structures have been established in many other
mature democracies. For example in Norway an MDA ensures that
the targeted media receive direct subsidies, inclusion of
government announcements and exemption from value added tax.
The Swedes have a press subsidies council which is funded
by tax on advertising revenue, and provides seed money for
the launch of newspapers, as well as production grants, joint
distribution debates etc.
South Africa can
enter the Information Age when its entire society is ready
to make that move. This means that the media must contribute
like all other partners in this country towards lifting the
educational standards of our people. There is a grassroots
movement afoot creating multi purpose community centres which
link up communities with the Internet. These MPCCs serve as
hosts for a range of functions - counselling for traumatised
survivors of sexual abuse, information on service available
in their locality to the telecentres initiated by the Dept
of Communication.
If we work together
we can create the platform for South Africa’s launch
into the new millennium. An educated people steeped in the
progressive traditions of this country and of humanity is
the best guarantor of press freedom.
Let us take up the
cudgels of such fine people as Percy Qoboza, Nat Nakasa, Can
Themba, Dan Tloome, Ruth First, Joe Gqabi, Sol Plaatjie so
that their sacrifices for the freedom of the press and the
liberation of all humanity was not in vain.
Yacoob Abba Omar
Deputy CEO, Government Communications (GCIS)
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