Say no to one-man SABC junta that’s seized power so many suffered, died for
IN CASE, like me, you used to wonder why the first thing new regimes overthrowing previous ones did was to go to the national broadcast house to announce who is in charge, Hlaudi Motsoeneng has given us the answer: whoever controls the broadcast house wields enormous power.
In April, the SABC’s chief operating officer announced out of the blue that the broadcaster would play 90 percent local music from the following day.
Local musicians were happy that the increased percentage of airtime would mean more royalties coming their way and greater exposure at home.
While the local industry was basking in the glory of this potential windfall, the SABC announced that it would increase royalty payments from 3 to 4 percent for artists registered with the royalty collecting societies.
Then it started going a little pearshaped. Someone must have whispered in Motsoeneng’s ear that his decision, bold as it was, might not be such a good idea for those stations and platforms that have created an audience of people who like international, mainly American, pop.
Within weeks, Motsoeneng climbed down. Black urban station MetroFM would be exempt from the 90:10 rule, and would be allowed to play 50:50 international music.
If Motsoeneng did not rule by decree or was available to the counsel of those who work closely with the stations, he would have been aware that his decision would backfire because listeners would go to non-SABC stations to listen to their staple diet.
Commercial media organisations are about profit and audience management; they are not social engineering projects.
It would be great if people’s tastes and thinking were as refined as you believe yours to be, but when you run a business that is supposed to generate income, your first duty is to see where the revenue will come from, and what will take it away.
This is a harsh truth that critics of media organisations who are always complaining about media content seem not to get.
To prove Motsoeneng is not a man interested in anyone else’s views, he dismissed the Indian community’s protest that the 90:10 changes deprived them.
Surely if Metro FM can get a reprieve, so must 5FM or Lotus FM. To give Metro FM the dispensation and arbitrarily deprive others of the same smacks of irrationality on the part of the decision-maker.
We shouldn’t be surprised. The trouble with a sense of unfettered power is that those who wield it don’t know where to stop. They don’t know what they are qualified to make decisions on and what they are not.
The power they wield has made the need to rationalise their decisions an extravagance they should not bother themselves with.
Take last week’s announcement that the SABC would no longer carry footage of acts of destroying public property.
This, reasoned Motsoeneng, was because the SABC did not want to “assist individuals to push their agenda that seeks media attention”.
The first thing that is wrong with the statement is that it comes from the boardroom, not the newsroom. Technocrats, even if they are Pulitzer Prize winners, lose their right to dictate what is news unless their title specifically says so.
Motsoeneng has effectively made himself the SABC editor-inchief, thus making line editors who should be making the call looking at the merits of the individual story effectively redundant.
Second, to say, as Motsoeneng does, that public expressions of frustration with authorities is “attention-seeking” smacks of Marie Antoinettism.
If Motsoeneng knew anything about how media is supposed to work, he would know that the story is not the acts of violence, but the reason for the unhappiness and, eventually, of the acts he has decreed are not worthy of our attention.
Nothing shows how ill-qualified Motsoeneng is to make the call than that he thinks the point of the coverage is to show acts of violence.
Thank goodness he wasn’t in charge of the SABC on June 16, 1976, otherwise he would probably have dismissed Soweto schoolchildren as “attention-seekers”.
It is simply bad journalism to cover social unrest, wars, labour strikes, taxi wars or any other conflict without giving fair context and allowing for audiences to make up their own minds about which side they choose to support.
Perhaps it is a reflection of where the ANC is today that its minister of Communications thinks the SABC’s disgraceful stance is something worthy of praise.
Those who value democracy and our hard-won freedoms must push back and say no to this one-man junta that has marched on Auckland Park and seized the power so many struggled, suffered and died for.
The people must govern.