A SERIES of speeches in the past week has encapsulated the debate over the role of the media in this country’s transformation.
The Reverend Frank Chikane, addressing a forum of 60 editors from around the Commonwealth, was quick to say he was not speaking on behalf of the deputy president’s office, where he is a special adviser, though his words did reflect much of the thinking coming out of that office.
“In the new order,” he said, “there are new roles the media can play.” But the only one Chikane selected as appropriate was one in which the media helped in the “national project” to “develop a just, equitable, non- racial, non-sexist, democratic society”.
The only appropriate debate Chikane allowed for was for the media to represent “the different views of different parties in their debate around the question of the national interest”. There was no place, in Chikane’s view, for a watchdog press, little support for a tough, investigative voice.
When Justice Arthur Chaskalson addresses a media gathering it is also of major significance, since as president of the Constitutional Court he is in the frontline of the defence against attacks on press freedom. Regrettably, Judge Chaskalson chose to emphasise to the Commonwealth Press Union the limitations to free speech: “Press freedom does not entitle journalists to trample upon the dignity and privacy of others – a constraint that some journalists and newspapers are reluctant to acknowledge.”
He chose the unfortunate example of the use of Section 205 subpoenas to make journalists provide information to police – an odd thing to do while it is still fresh in public minds how the police tried to abuse Section 205 to collect evidence from journalists against the Cape Town vigilante group Pagad.
It was an unfortunate tone to adopt at a conference that would have hoped to hear the court president proclaim his determination to protect our new-found freedoms and, wherever possible, to push back the boundaries of free expression.
But then came Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, ever the voice of independent and critical thought. “We need a sycophantic, kow-towing, lickspittle media as much as we need a hole in the head,” he told the editors’ forum. “It is quite crucial that we become used to asking the awkward question, `But why?’; to refuse to be browbeaten by those who confuse authoritative with authoritarian; to cultivate the culture in which we refuse to become kowtowing and uncritical, scared of rocking the boat, afraid of not toeing the line.”
Tutu did express his distaste for the born- again critics who only developed the ability to criticise the government when the ANC came into power; and he did make a plea for the media to praise the new government as well as criticise.
But in his fundamental point, he was unequivocal: the kind of media we need is a critical and outspoken watchdog.