I READ your article “TML’s nervous editors” (April 19 to 25) with keen interest. The editors and their managers have every reason to be nervous. In fact, they should be shaking in their boots. If a black consortium does take over Times Media Limited, it should bring an end to racism at this self-proclaimed citadel of liberal values.
Black journalists have been treated with a mixture of contempt and paternalism by successive TML editors and managers. The Sunday Times is particularly culpable because it has a longer history of employing blacks than the Financial Mail and Business Day. Blacks at the Sunday Times have traditionally worked for the extra edition for pitiful salaries.
No meaningful effort was made to identify and nurture talent among existing and aspiring black journalists. It took the collapse of apartheid for Ken Owen and his crew to allow a few blacks to work for the “main body” of the paper which caters for white readers. Able black journalists were regarded as less valuable than white rookies on the main body.
As a result, incalculable harm was done to many black journalists in terms of diminished professional prospects and low self-esteem. If TML were to open its files to public scrutiny, there would be a lot of red faces in its boardroom and high editorial offices.
It is not surprising that TML now wants a hitherto non-existent charter to ostensibly safeguard high editorial standards and independence. The reason is obvious. Present proprietors, managers and editors share the same values and prejudices. There was therefore no need for written guarantees.
The NAIL/NEC (New Africa Investment Limited/National Empowerment Consortium) alliance is unlikely to allow TML to carry on with its insidious form of racism. They seek a charter in the name of editorial excellence and independence to perpetuate an agenda of white hegemony and privilege at TML.
Your article quotes Financial Mail editor Nigel Bruce: “If I am dismissed, it will be because I am critical of the government, and the people responsible for my dismissal will have to face the international and commercial consequences.” Should a black consortium take over TML, it should not succumb to such threats and blackmail. – Ashley Skosana, Yeoville