Crime is an easy target for foreign journalists, but some are finding new angles on South Africa writes Lynda Gledhill
When CNN’s Mike Hanna reports that South Africa is on the brink of anarchy, millions around the world sit up and listen. Recently this global television news empire devoted half an hour to spiralling crime here. And because the political transition has been so peaceful, crime may be easy pickings for correspondents who tend to use Johannesburg as a base to cover Africa.
Tom Cohen, a correspondent for the Associated Press, says: “The present issue is crime. Foreign media are just caught up in the sensational aspect of crime. It leads to a belief that anywhere you go, you are going to be raped or hijacked. This is a direct result of the foreign image created by the media.”
“Not so,” say other correspondents who try to place crime-reporting in a context and are giving a more balanced picture of the new South Africa.
“We can’t cover crime every day like the domestic press,” says Mohammed Sabreen, the correspondent for a large Egyptian daily newspaper, Al-Ahram. “But from time to time we touch on the issue. I try to cover a new dimension, and look at it as a symptom of larger social issues like unemployment.”
Suzanne Daley, bureau chief for the New York Times, wrote only one story last year focusing specifically on crime.
“I hope my readers who read steadily don’t just see one story and make a judgment,” she says. “But it is a refrain. It permeates life and influences how we live and spend money.”
BBC Southern African correspondent Jeremy Vine said there is no getting around the crime stereotype.
“It is tragic that Johannesburg, whether trying to or not, has got the reputation as the crime capital of the world, along with Mexico City,” he said.
However, there is no denying that just as news reports and anecdotal evidence lead most people to think the French are rude, South Africa is now irrevocably linked to crime in many people’s minds.
“The trouble with news is that the narrative builds up. Crime equals South Africa, equals crime,” Vine said. “It’s hard to shift that. I talk to friends from back home who think I must have to run for cover when walking to the shops.”
Yuri Pitchousin, chief correspondent for the Russian Itar-Tass news service, said his country is familiar with the emphasis on crime. “I try to cover as many different items as possible,” he said.
Reports on crime may stand out simply because there is less coverage of South Africa than before and during the 1994 elections.
“A country can’t stay in the headlines forever,” Vine said. “The transition was a gigantic news story, but it’s a long process. Attention is naturally going to turn elsewhere. It’s probably very encouraging for the country, because as it is more stable there is less interest.”
In the world of journalism, a stable transition makes for boring headlines. “It was a huge story until the elections in 1994, but since things went smoothly and there wasn’t out-and-out war, the story lost stature in world reporting,” Cohen said.
Also, many correspondents based in Johannesburg cover all of Africa or even further afield. This means as stories heat up elsewhere on the continent, news from South Africa drops. For example, the CNN crew has spent the past couple of weeks in the Middle East monitoring the crisis in Iraq.
Another impact on the coverage is how much interest there is in the correspondent’s home country. Vine, for example, said in the United Kingdom there is a great deal of interest in South Africa.
“South Africa was never off the radar screen for years and years during apartheid,” he says. “People are still hungry to know what’s going on. As long as Mandela is around, people want to know what he is doing.”
Sabreen said interest in South Africa from the Arab world is growing as business interests in the region expand. “I see South Africa emerging as an important player in the region and internationally,” he said.
Interest in the United States tends to focus on the extreme, no matter what the topic, according to Sanford Ungar, who reported on Africa for The Washington Post and is now dean of the journalism school at the American University in Washington DC.
“Most Americans have little direct connection with Africa, and so the exotic is far more likely than the profound to attract their attention,” he says. “American journalism, perhaps more than most, is a journalism of exception.
“If most people in the United States expected Nelson Mandela to be a huge success – and, based on his reputation, they probably did – then good news out of South Africa is no surprise. Any bad news is far more likely to attract attention.”
While Daley agrees that the interests of Americans may differ from those of South Africans, nonetheless, she sees these stories as important.
Because they dominated headlines in the anti-apartheid struggle, many liberation figures still attract headlines. “There is a lot of residual interest in Winnie Mandela, but I don’t have a problem with that, because what has happened with her is a very interesting story,” says Daley.
While political coverage may have levelled off, financial news has picked up. As the country continues to move forward, most foreign correspondents see the interest level in South Africa continuing to shift. “News often happens in cycles,” Vine says. “South Africa enjoyed many years of overwhelmingly positive press, and maybe for a few years it is going to be more negative. Then it may be out of the news altogether.”