Daily Dispatch
Actions don’t line up with words
THE media industry worldwide is engaged in a titanic battle to survive – one taking place on a number of fronts. Immense pressure has come from the economic crunch and the technological revolution. Newspaper revenues have dived, budgets have been slashed and staff complements razored down and juniorised. And, as the industry frantically (and expensively) tries to find new paths through a jungle of fake news, social media and free news which hammers away 24/7, deadlines get tighter and meaner.
No surprise then that we sometimes do make mistakes. We also cannot cover issues as widely or as in as much depth as they deserve. But amazingly, we very often get things right. This is largely because internal checks and balances are in place to ensure accuracy. Professional backbone is also retained by mere virtue of the fact that the industry is now so rigorous and financially hobbled, that journalists who are not committed to our professional codes and ethics tend to fall away. This is true of this newspaper. At the Dispatch we are also well aware of our tradition of fighting for equality and justice for all, and try hard to uphold it.
But worringly, a third front in our battle to survive, one that disappeared in 1994 but reopened 10 years ago, is now heating up fast. It is involves press freedom versus regulation by the state.
In 2007 at the ANC’s Polokwane conference, the notion of a media tribunal was proposed. Since then this idea has popped up with increasing regularity, but never more forcefully than this year. In March the ANC called on parliament to investigate establishing the tribunal. This week the call was endorsed at the ANC national policy conference.
The print media was a “powerful tool that could effect even a regime change” and needed to be held accountable on how it conducted its affairs, ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu, told journalists gathered in Soweto.
Conference delegates had argued that if parliament had powers to appoint leaders of constitutional structures such as the public protector‚ the human rights and other such Chapter 9 institutions‚ it should extend that authority to the print media, he said.
How the absurdity of his argument was lost on a smart individual like Mthembu is difficult to understand. One need look no further than the present public protector to see exactly why the possibility of ruling party parliamentarians appointing a media tribunal is a hideous idea.
It is even more frightening considering the political landscape. Repressive tactics by the state are manifesting day after day. South African journalists are now experiencing harassment and intimidation at levels unprecedented in post-apartheid South Africa.
This week the South African National Editors Forum resorted to court action to try to stop 11 investigative journalists and respected editors from being “harassed‚ intimidated‚ assaulted and threatened” over their reporting and analysis of corruption and state capture.
Suna Venter, one of the SABC eight, who refused to back down despite death threats, her car being shot at, her brake wires being cut, died last week, aged 32, from heart failure.
The ANC has been quick to speak out in the defence of the journalists under siege and to insist it upholds freedom of expression. But the simultaneous efforts to “regulate” one of society’s most vigorous watchdogs suggest these sentiments are simply lip service.