At least debate about this country’s media can take place now without fear of government
clampdown. No longer do editors have to respond to every government criticism by warning of the dangers of action which might inhibit press freedom.
Even if Deputy President Thabo Mbeki had such activity in mind when he criticised the media (and there is no sign of it), he would have to fight his way through the Bill of Rights and the Constitutional Court. The fact is, we have more reporting freedom at the moment than many Western countries.
In a carefully crafted speech to the Black Editors’ Forum on Saturday, the deputy president lambasted editors who are on “a continued offensive to maintain the status quo as much as possible”. The root of the problem, he said, is that “newspapers and magazines are, despite protestations to the contrary, predominantly white-owned, edited by whites and largely written by people drawn from the same sector of our population”.
In this characterisation of the media, the deputy president is correct. It is a great sadness that the South African newspaper industry has left itself vulnerable to the dismissal of its views because it has not had the foresight and courage to engineer anything other than minor changes in the structure of its ownership and control.
The standard response of editors is to trumpet their contribution to the change which brought Deputy President Mbeki to power. It is, by and large, baloney. Only a handful of newspapers consistently and actively opposed the previous government and campaigned for democracy, and the vast majority of those have closed down.
Another stock response is to bemoan the dearth of skilled and experienced black journalists. But this situation exists largely because of the failure of the major newspaper groups to do significant training and skills development in the past decade. It is as if this generation of journalists is expected to have dropped out of the sky — or perhaps exile.
Nevertheless, what Mbeki is doing is painting the entire media with the same brush. He throws together all criticism of the government and treats it as the work of white saboteurs. He does not differentiate between those who criticise his government when it fails to deliver change, and those who are opposing change. He skates over the fact that a good many of those criticising his government for slowness in delivery are, in fact, black.
He has turned the issue on its head. There would be a problem with media coverage if there were insufficient criticism, for this would be likely to encourage the government to complacency and decay. Too much criticism might give the deputy president a headache, but it is one he could probably live with.
In fact, Mbeki owes the media a few thank yous. He could thank the Sunday Times, for example, for exposing the extraordinary cost to the Mpumalanga province of consultant Eugene Nyati, thus saving substantial amounts of money.
Ironically, it is a deputy president’s praise, rather than criticism, that would shake up most editors. We’re used to attacks.