Social media must pay up

Your recent editorial comment refers (“Don’t let SA democracy die in darkness”, March 20). Yes, corporate SA should allocate part of its social budget to the traditional media. But that is not enough.

Social media (Google et al) is here to stay, and growing. Traditional media (Business Day et al) is dying. This is because most of the latter’s advertising income has shifted online.

So what? Isn’t this capitalism, the essence of which is ruthless competition? Yes, capitalism is ruthless. Yet, capitalism must in extreme cases be regulated. Workers’ rights have been enhanced over centuries and become legally protected.

In the early 19th century children as young as eight worked 14-hour days in William Blake’s “dark satanic mills”. This is unthinkable now. Thankfully, child labour is no longer a threat to the wellbeing of society. Our major threat is the rise of the postfact era: believe what you like; discard the referee adjudicating factual foundations.

The common body of accepted facts on which any stable society rests is yielding to a giant whirlpool, in which rumours swirl and feed prejudice and enmity. Through no fault of the social media itself, but rather as a corollary of its limitless reach, this whirlpool is sustained and deepened.

An antidote is needed in the form of established facts and news reports that stand outside emotion and above ignorance. In fact, we already have this antidote: our societal referee the traditional media, professional journalists who are accountable to their readers and responsible in law for the veracity of their reporting.

It is not an act of charity, or incompatible with the ethos of a capitalist economy, for the social media to contribute a portion of its turnover to the traditional media. As social media profit margins are as high as 25% of turnover, a 2.5% levy would do no material harm to it; indeed it would do a power of good for society. Willem Cronje

Cape Town