Don’t stone the messenger, rather tell us your stories
Attacks on j ournalists during protests are increasing and getting more violent every year. Both physical and ideological, they come from several sources: police, the government and ruling party, protesters and now private security companies at the universities.
Service delivery protests have been in full force more or less since the fall of apartheid. The protesters use violence to attract the media and so draw the attention of government to their plight. But they also often turn on members of the media.
There have been incidents of violence against journalists, perpetrated by police officers and private security firms brought in by universities during #FeesMustFall protests. Students also launch ideological attacks on the media, as witnessed at a recent meet- ing in Johannesburg of academics, parents and residents.
One student raged at the media for only being there for “the fire” (arson attacks) and damage to property but not being present to report on the factors that have led to the protests. These factors include hungry students sleeping in libraries because they can’t afford accommodation, exorbitant rentals being charged in Hillbrow, unemployed parents who can’t give them money for registration, let alone books, and an alienating institutional culture.
The bleat from the left wing is that the media is neoliberal, bourgeois, profit-driven and ghoulish about arson and property being destroyed at the “elite” universities. Whatever the merits or demerits of this argument, no student has physically attacked a member of the media during these student protests — so far. May it stay that way.
The South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) has, for a few years now, said that research must be done on why service delivery protesters attack journalists: they grab cameras and sometimes even stone and assault reporters who are doing their jobs. But there is no funding to devote to such a study. Sanef also said that perhaps it is necessary to sit down with people and explain what reporters do and why — what their function is in a democracy.
Some journalists say that when they get to know activists before the protests start, they are welcomed by residents and even protected during any violence.
But can today’s staff-depleted newsrooms afford this “luxury” of sending out reporters to get to know the people?
What we do know from reporters on the ground is that protesters incorrectly believe the footage could be used against them in courts. They don’t know that journalists generally don’t hand over their footage to the authorities.
That’s why photographers and television broadcast journalists are most vulnerable compared with, say, a print journalist who displays just a pen and notebook.
The number of photographers who have had their pictures destroyed grows higher each year — and the culprits include the police.
Meanwhile, last week a major vic- tory for media freedom of expression and for the public’s right to know occurred when Sanef, Primedia and civil society organisations won their appeal in the Supreme Court of Appeal to declare the censoring of the commotion at the opening of Parliament in February 2015 as unconstitutional. Remember the signal jamming when Economic Freedom Fighters members were assaulted?
The winning argument was that this was a violation of the right of the public to be fully informed of proceedings in the House. Signal jamming was patently unlawful.
As journalists get beaten up and their footage and images destroyed, there could be another showdown looming and a court ruling that may stipulate that police are unlawful in their assaults.
What is also worth noting is that those who have access to the media and to the courts have the resources to gain such victories. But what about someone like Michael Tshele, a freelance photographer who worked for Leseding News and online daily newspaper Kormorant, who was shot dead by police in January 2014?
Tshele was taking pictures of broken water pipes in Mothutlung near Brits in the North West Province during service delivery protests.
“He only had a camera,” activist Solly Setlale said in 2014. “There was no stone in his hand. The only threat he posed was that his camera was recording evidence of what the police were doing.” His death went by quietly. Now, in October 2016, as the #FeesMustFall movement splits into factions according to divergent tactics as well as who leads and who has power, the message to students should be: don’t rage against the media, rather tell them your stories.
Maybe, as some research shows, violence is now embedded in our protest culture. But this argument lacks imagination. As for protesters who complain about the “bourgeois media”, are they actually contacting journalists with their stories?