The submission to the truth commission by Independent Newspapers is a litany of failure, argues Anton Harber
INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS has conceded that the company has much to be embarrassed about in its history.
In its report to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, written by ex- editor John Patten, the country’s largest newspaper group writes that it (formerly the Argus Group) had “blunted its cutting edge in exposing all the wrongs of apartheid” and that “some human rights abuses were not addressed when they might have been”.
The company admits to racial discrimination in its employment practices, and petty apartheid in its offices. It regrets that black journalists did not get promotions that recognised the vital role they played in the group’s papers.
“Proper balance to coverage of the political events was not achieved,” Patten writes, and even says the paper paternalistically did not trust black editors with full editorial responsibility, putting white editorial supervisors in to watch them.
The report is a litany of failure, which journalists will read with a sense of shame and pain. It is an account of how, with very few exceptions, Argus editors failed to rise to the challenges of the last four decades.
The era of apartheid repression, particularly the 1985 to 1990 State of Emergency, was a formidable test for all journalists. Some rose to meet the challenge, and flourished – like Vrye Weekblad editor Max du Preez. Others ducked for cover – and now have to explain themselves.
Patten tries to do this. He cites the corporate culture. “It was a very conservative company. It paid conservatively. It took to innovation conservatively. It was a slow-moving company … It was an establishment company run by establishment people. And very successfully over the years. It would be wrong for us to claim to have set the pace,” he quotes Saturday Argus and Sunday Argus editor Jon Hobday saying.
Patten cites commercial considerations – and says alternative papers like the New Nation were able to be more outspoken because they did not have such concerns. This seems to imply that only the poor and the weak were able to stand up to the government – those with deep pockets, huge resources and immense political clout were somehow less able to.
He cites apartheid laws, the harassment of journalists and white horror at the strategies of the liberation struggle. He cites racial division in the newsroom, with most white reporters horrified at the violence of the anti-apartheid struggle, and most black journalists sacrificing their objectivity to contribute to it. He cites the liberation movement’s alliance with communists and socialists, and editors’ horror at the thought.
He is able to give many reasons for what happened, but this just adds to the sense that almost every Argus editor was defeated by the challenge of the times. The instances he cites of defiance of the government are few and far between.
More notable are the gaps in his account. He does not tell of Argus editors’ across- the-board support or neutrality in the crucial referendum of 1983 on the tricameral Parliament – the one that sparked the uprising of 1984/85. He does not tell of the time when the Argus managing director agreed with PW Botha that there was a total onslaught, including elements of the press, and something had to be done about it. He does not look at the agreements editors entered into with police, the defence force and prisons which sanctioned limitations on coverage.
And he does not conduct the real test: how the newspaper covered crucial issues, such as raids into neighbouring states, township violence, sanctions and the “third force”.
Instead of asking why smaller newspapers were able to publish more and be more defiant, he dismisses them off-handedly as chancers and opportunists. These papers, like the Mail & Guardian, had criticised the Argus Group coverage “to make legitimised space for themselves in the market”. Papers like Vrye Weekblad were able to do what they did not because they were courageous or were – like good journalists – determined to get the story out, but because they had foreign funders to please.
Patten’s justification for the Argus company is that it was “liberal”. It believed in obeying the law, working within the system, “reasoned negotiation”, balance and “doing the right thing”.
“The Star cherished its image of grey respectability,” he writes. The paper was “desperately trying to be an effective agent of change” through dispassionate reporting.
But it is hard to see how it was dispassionate, since he concedes that the paper was dominated by the perspective of conservative whites who opposed the liberation movements, were isolated from township politics and feared black domination.
He seems to forget that there were many honourable liberals who joined the liberation struggle, or who were powerful and active independent forces for change (like the Black Sash, or the Legal Resources Centre) and some who even broke the law, with proud defiance.
The cautious approach he describes at Argus newspapers may be described and explained in many different ways. But it is a disservice to confuse it with liberalism.
Anton Harber is the ex-editor of the Mail & Guardian and now chief executive of a new radio broadcasting consortium