Media transformation back on the agenda
THE GOVERNMENT should put its money where its mouth is by advertising with media that give it a fair hearing rather than those who write it off as a failed state.
Karima Brown, group editorial executive of Independent Newspapers, delivered this blunt message to the ANC on the eve of its national general council meeting, where the ruling party’s unhappiness with the media will be aired.
Brown told SABC Digital in an interview yesterday that the ANC and the government complained about the lack of transformation in the media and about the media taking the side of the political opposition.
She agreed this was generally true. But it was not true of Independent Newspapers, which was the only black-owned media house and was advancing transformation, not only through increased black representation in newsrooms but in changing the generally negative narrative about South Africa and about Africa.
For that the group and she herself were often criticised in other quarters as being pro-ANC, Brown said. Yet, the government and the ANC continued to place the bulk of their adverts with other newspapers – particularly the Sunday Times and other papers of the Times Media Group – which consistently wrote off the government and the ANC.
Brown also criticised the ANC and the government for failing to give enough support to the Media Development and Diversity Agency, the statutory development agency, and to community and vernacular newspapers which were conveying the government and ANC message to a wider readership.
She noted that under its current ownership, Independent Newspapers was expanding its vernacular titles and that its Zulu paper Isolezwe was the largest of its kind in the country.
Though Brown agreed with the ANC and the government that the media in general was in opposition, she made it clear she did not support the idea of a statutory body to regulate the media, but believes in self-regulation through the Press Council.
This is one of the proposals on the table at the national general council meeting.
Brown disagreed with the notion that the media could or should be completely objective. Certain media held certain views and there was nothing wrong with that, as long as those media acknowledged the fact.
But Brown said she had a problem with most media houses trotting out the same white male economic analysts like Mike Schussler and Dawie Roodt as though they represented the objective economic truth when, she said, they represented a pro-capitalist, neo-liberal agenda and there were other economists with different perspectives whom the media should use.
Independent Newspapers believed in presenting a diversity of views, Brown said.