Daily Dispatch

Only free media counts

FLAGGING standards at the Cape Times newspaper, according to DA leader Helen Zille, prompted a decision by the Western Cape to cancel subscriptions with the 138-year-old publication.

As a former journalist, Zille may consider herself an astute arbiter of the fourth estate. In the last few days she has certainly been loquacious about the editorial aptitude of the Cape Town newspaper.

Technically, the decision was one taken by the DA-led provincial legislature. However, the directive to jettison the paper has the uncompromising feel of Zille acting alone.

In turn, reaction has been loud and divided, throwing up a gamut of contradictions along the way.

Zille has previously chastened the ANC for its hostile stance towards the media, particularly when its leaders have called for boycotts.

The same could be said of the Western Cape’s termination of services with the Cape Times. Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande called it hypocritical, and he’s right.

This has nothing to do with standards, although that particular complaint, evidenced by an allegedly plagiarised piece, appears to have some merit.

But if this was the foundation for Zille’s disquiet, she could have resorted to other avenues for redress, like the Press Ombudsman.

The paper’s apparent snub of her questions around the offending story may have bristled as well, but surely not enough to warrant an allout embargo.

A more plausible explanation is the fact that Cape Times is part of the Independent Newspapers’ stable, led by government’s paramount praise singer Iqbal Survé.

The story that so riled Zille reprises a 2012 article on foetal alcohol syndrome and intimates that the infamous “dop system” of paying workers with wine is still commonplace in Western Cape.

It seems to entrench the idea of an apartheid legacy flourishing in the DA’s provincial bastion. This skirmish is all about politics.

South African National Editors’ Forum, which has a tetchy relationship with Survé, correctly called Zille out, not that it had much effect.

Zille has been unyielding, saying that continued patronage of the Cape Times would amount to fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

The ANC also waded in, claiming censorship by the DA, but said nothing of a decision a few days earlier by pro-government The New Age to withdraw from the aegis of the Press Ombudsman, following an editorial complaint by the DA itself.

Indeed the world is a strange place when the ANC trumpets freedom of speech, in this case for the same reason that the DA took issue with the Cape Times.

By now politicians should know that criticism is inimical to functioning democracy and that genuinely independent media owe this not to bureaucrats, but to their readers.