In the week that police Captain Jeff Benzien has been demonstrating to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission how he used to physically throttle political suspects it might seem incongruous to be agonising over the shortcomings of the press under apartheid — the “crimes” being, on the face of it, somewhat disparate. But in fact the captain’s antics provide a useful counterpoint to the question as to whether society’s self-proclaimed watchdogs did enough to fight the iniquities of the apartheid era.
With the commission’s hearings on the role of the media under apartheid scheduled for little more than a month’s time, the debate in the press is hotting up. In this edition Ken Owen climbs into the controversy in famously acerbic fashion, making a series of points — perhaps the most telling of which is the need to examine the role of the Newspaper Press Union. In Owen’s words, it was this organisation which “rigged the markets, crushed new competitors, fixed prices, suppressed salaries and, whenever necessary, struck deals with the apartheid government”.
The order in which Owen lists those nefarious activities of the press union is apposite, because it was the pursuit of profit which compromised the media’s stand against apartheid. If there was a failure on the part of editors and editorial staff it was principally a failure to take a stand against the argument routinely mounted by their own managers that compromise — whether with government, or with the conservative views of advertisers and a targeted readership group — was necessary for survival. In reality it was, of course, compromise for the sake of maximised profit. But compromise predictably begat compromise, from agreements on self-censorship, to the firing of Laurence Gandar, to the closure of the Rand Daily Mail.
Improper proprietorial interference has long been recognised, around the world, as a major threat to press freedom. It is in the interests of a free press in the new South Africa that the role of media managers in the old be examined. We therefore urge the commission to make use of its powers — if that should prove necessary — to obtain the relevant documentation from the files of the country’s major newspaper groups as well as the union and use them as a basis for their forthcoming inquiry into the media.