Contested territory: Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's popularity is so great that voters jokingly looked for her name on ballot papers in last week's local elections.
Newspapers in South Africa have lost revenue, readers and, some would argue, relevance. We can’t blame technology alone. Media executives, managers and even journalists have been unable to adequately match the demands of technological change to the need for journalism that probes, reflects and responds to the material realities of the societies we serve.
The media, after all, is not a mechanical monolith untouched by people but rather is made up of people who — for whatever reason and, yes, often it is for commercial gain — are documenting the drama of our world. And, contrary to what we may sometimes claim, we are not immune from infusing our own experiences, feelings and beliefs into that drama.
The success of what we do as journalists, however, is measured by our ability to inform decisions, advance change and support social progress. The textbooks call it “impact journalism”.
In South Africa the national print media is criticised, often with good reason, for its failure to reach beyond our historical audience in the suburbs. At other times we are criticised for an apparent obsession with the president and the ruling party. And very often, the latter criticism is tied to being embedded in the psyche of the suburbs. This criticism is not without merit.
At the same time, however, our national print media has been instrumental in exposing the abuse of the state for the gain of a politically connected few. Few would argue against us probing the manner in which elites interact with the state and its institutions. It is in these interactions that we understand how the state is being used, or abused, to the detriment of the millions of people who would benefit from a basic income grant or the thousands of students who could benefit from better government funding to our universities.
The release this week of the public protector’s report into allegations of state capture by the Gupta family showed the importance of the media in holding our politicians, and their friends and families, accountable. For years, our pages have been filled with stories alleging corruption in the dealings of a cohort of politicians.
Indeed, the number of times the Mail & Guardian is cited in the Thuli Madonsela’s State of Capture report underscores the need for good investigative journalism. The same applies to the work of our colleagues at City Press and Sunday Times. Many of the revelations in the report were first laid bare in these pages. For years these allegations were aired without consequence. Things just seemed to grow worse.
In response, some have accused us of having a fetish for corruption porn. But there is a good reason corruption is news: the abuse of the state stymies our ability to bring real redress to the millions of South Africans still suffering under the yoke of historical disadvantage.
Of course, our impact is not measured in citations in public protector reports alone. Our impact is measured in how well we shift public debate and how well, or not, we equip voters to make informed political decisions. We need to ensure that our work that picks on corrupt politicians also speaks to the lived experience of the people. Only in this way are we likely to contribute to lasting social and political change.