Journalists hack at the media code at their peril

THE member of the Upper Jukskei Flyfishing Collective was delighted to interrupt his fishing to view reports of his colleagues at an impromptu #HlaudiMustFall event at the SABC’s citadel in Auckland Park last week, though he suspects it was as much a protest against the so-called public broadcaster as it was against its chief operating officer, Hlaudi Motsoeneng.

And rightly so. The SABC has long been a low light in the firmament of journalism and no protest against its statist machinations should go unrecognised. First, there is the wonder of the event happening at all. Organising hacks is as rewarding as herding cats, particularly because it is impossible to tell protesters from reporters. Except, perhaps, when reporting is considered to be a form of protest, as the history of the Fourth Estate shows. Also, it is comfortingly familiar to witness a re-enactment of 1980s journalistic righteous indignation which gave us Vrye Weekblad and the Weekly Mail.

There is a niggle, though. Last week’s protest was an expression of solidarity with the senior journalists suspended (and then unsuspended, and those soon-to-be suspended) for doing their job, but the protesters conflated the issues into a #ZumaMustFall event and an ideological statement. The member is not complaining, but the trouble is that without those broadcast journos the SABC would not exist, at least not as the ANC’s propaganda arm.

That is peculiar though, cognitive dissonance notwithstanding. Motsoeneng might be a manager of journalists, but he, too, is a journalist, if not necessarily Pringle Prize material, and he, too, has a master. And shoulder to shoulder with the protesters with their mouths taped shut, stand the ANC’s favoured running dog, SA’s own Stalinism-flavoured communist party, the very antithesis of freedom of speech. You might say SABC journos should take more care in picking friends, but that would not be good enough.

The deeper malaise is the partisan relationships so beloved of journalists everywhere. It created today’s culture at the SABC years ago when Afrikaner nationalism captured it and the Afrikaans-language press; faith in groupthink allowed Joseph Goebbels to pervert the German psyche; a breakdown in ethics permits advertisers to dictate policy at media houses.

It is rotten and in contradiction of the journalistic code. Such a relationship is created when journos accept a junket in exchange for a favourable story. It is as corrupt as that between Schabir Shaik and Jacob Zuma. Ethical journalists should have nothing to do with agendas, political or commercial. Financial Mail editor Rob Rose laments few journalists can afford the luxury of walking out on a point of principle. That is true, but blaming the rise of internet-based news operations for the undoing of traditional publications is not.

SABC journos understand their employer and they comprise its culture. Traditional media struggle to compete with the new media not because the new media deliver a superior product, but because traditional journalism is so poor. It is unethical, underskilled and lazy. Journalists should offer credibility and integrity in exchange for readers and advertising revenue, not partisan obfuscation and compromise.

It can be remedied. Marshall McLuhan said in 1964 “the medium is the message”, but he has been thoroughly disproven. Journalism survived TV, the new medium of the day, and thrived by embracing it. The technology that is today’s new media will change soon, and it should be embraced, but a desirable journalistic product is based on accurate reporting and fair comment.

Change that at your peril, fellow hacks, as the SABC’s journos have discovered.