The fourth estate is dead

WE live in a world in which so many bad things are happening that our pervasive pessimism is not misplaced. Some might point to the fact that we are not filing into mental hospitals for depression and anxiety as evidence of the triumph of the human spirit.

Growing unemployment, disease, crimes against humanity, corrupt leaders of both the public and private sectors and greed are evident throughout the world.

For many, what was keeping them sane was the trust they had in journalism the guard of the guardians. But when the debate about two journalists wearing clothing with ANC insignia at a rally in Cape Town erupted, they might just find out how wrong they were to believe in the fourth estate.

What will remove society from mental hospitals and put them on morgue tables is not that two journalists may be supporters and/or members of or sympathisers of the ANC but rather that those we trusted to keep our world away from total annihilation think that this is of such import that everything should stop.

Perhaps the debate is not out of place, but the logic of the debate is cause for serious concern.

To understand the debate one must not just read or listen to the many words written or said about the two journalists but rather hear what is being said to understand what is being meant. And to do that one must start with the known to better contextualise the unknown and interpret it.

South Africa, for all its problems, is still a democratic state in which every five years the people go to the ballot and vote for political leadership of their choice.

One ought to assume that journalists, as guard to the guardians, possess the deepest sense of patriotism and they understand the importance of the vote and honour those who made the ultimate sacrifice of death to earn South Africa this right to vote by themselves resisting all temptation to treat voting day as braai day.

One must trust that journalists are wise enough to realise that to earn the privilege of watchdog and speaker of truth to power they must have a vested interest in the future of the country and that the best demonstrator of their faithfulness to the cause is voting.

So surely Karima Brown, Vukani Mde and Max Du Preez vote.

After the ANC conference in Cape Town, some may think they know who the former two vote for but what about Du Preez?

Does he derive his impartiality and fairness from our ignorance of where he puts his X on the ballot paper? Surely, with all the problems in the world, we are not a nation that believes that ignorance can ever be good. If we are, then we are hypocrites because we’ve repeatedly called for the Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga to resign or be fired for the ignorance of our school going children.

Surely, if ignorance is good then it shouldn’t matter who funds the ANC or gives donations to President Jacob Zuma. So, let politicians keep their secret benefactors because if what we don’t know about Du Preez’s politics gives him credibility, what we don’t know about Zuma gives him credibility.

It’s an absurd debate; scary to even hear that guardians of our democracy could believe that there is wisdom in burying ones head in the sand.

The debate so far has been that Brown and Mde have lost the faith of the nation because we saw them wearing an ANC shirt”, journalists must be seen to be apolitical otherwise they cannot be trusted and this seems to come more from journalists themselves and, even worse, from the only people the guard of the guardians trust, the commentators and opinion makers.

What is this world coming to when people who make a living from selling information (newspapers), the very people we have put of the pedestal for so many centuries tell us ignorance is good? Don’t we trust them because we think they are wise? If they insist ignorance is good, where do they derive their wisdom?

We should reject this out of hand, it’s literally stupid. We should always gather more information to use to gain knowledge not the opposite. The debate we should have is where do we obtain more information not less.

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