Media must be fixed
The bishops of Southern Africa have rightly protested against the transparent attempts by the African National Congress to place controls on the media.
This newspaper last month pointed out that the proposed Protection of Information Bill and Media Appeals Tribunal will constitute a malignant assault on the freedom of the media.
Even within the ANC, there is no consensus that these proposals are welcome. There are good reasons to believe that the information Bill, a law that most likely would not withstand scrutiny in the Constitutional Court, will be quietly abandoned.
This, however, should not comfort us. Civil society must become ever more vigilant and engaged in guarding South Africa’s hard-won democracy, because the ANC is increasingly showing itself to be in a tense relationship with essential democratic principles.
This is not to claim, of course, that the ANC is working to dismantle our democratic system. But it must be understood that democracy consists of many rights and obligations that go beyond periodic participation in elections.
The lifeblood of democracy is a government’s accountability in it’s service to the people, and society’s capacity and disposition to hold the government, the state and its organs answerable. The Protection of Information Bill would poison that lifeblood. Indeed, it has the hallmarks of totalitarianism.
Likewise, as we noted last month, the proposed Media Appeals Tribunal seems to be intended not to address the many problems with the South African media, but to create conditions whereby critical and investigative journalists can be intimidated and tied up in a complex process.
There is a very real danger that the abuse of such a statutory tribunal would eventually compel editors, journalists and the shareholders of newspapers to apply the same kind of self-censorship which the mainstream press applied under apartheid.
There is no high principle in the proposal. A tribunal answerable to parliament would do little to protect citizens from bad journalism, but do much to shroud unethical behaviour by government and state officials and their cronies.
Even if this proposal is being made by people with integrity, it does not require much imagination to see how a statutory tribunal can be abused by people with no integrity.
The ANC is correct to note, however, that the South African media is in need of reform. Many local journalists have lost the compass of best practices in their field. There is a pervasive lack of respect, with undue irreverence sometimes being mistaken for valid critical observation.
When factual error or unfair comment is published, some journalists are cavalier about their transgressions, as though rules of accountability do not apply to them. Editors, often strapped for staff, assign stories to reporters who have no knowledge of the field that they are asked to cover. Many reporters are just not well trained. The list of problems is extensive, and certainly not unique to South Africa.
Almost a decade ago, the South African National Editors Forum warned about the “juniorisation” of newsrooms. Many experienced and talented journalists are still being sidelined for demographic and financial reasons.
The problems in the South African media reside in editorial and managerial incompetence, ignorance, lack of professionalism, the profit motive and complacency more than they do in an exceptional lack of ethics.
These problems are not fixed by a tribunal, but must be addressed by the media themselves. And if they neglect to do so, the bad idea of a statutory media tribunal will not go away.
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