Dirk Hartford : Right to Reply
The Mail & Guardian last week published suggestions that Yfm radio secured its licence through improper political intervention by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki (“A short leap to dictatorship”, March 27 to April 2).
Let us state at the outset that Yfm never sought, nor are we aware of, any intervention whatsoever from Mbeki in the licensing process.
Yfm is the most successful by far of the new radio licences issued by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) last year. Yfm’s weekly audience, measured in our first month of operation, was roughly equal to all six of the stations licensed by the IBA, and our quantity of commercials far surpasses any other newcomer.
Simple common sense thus challenges Lizeka Mda’s scurrilous implication that it either sought or needed Mbeki’s intervention. Yfm secured its licence on the basis of a vote by IBA councillors, of whom only one voted against Yfm. Yfm came second out of the three stations licensed in Gauteng in the voting.
Mda implies impropriety in the involvement of ex-Radio Freedom propagandists in the Youth Radio Consortium which secured the licence. In fact, proudly, almost all the shareholders of Yfm, including hundreds and thousands of Cosatu-affiliated workers, were staunch anti-apartheid activists.
By Mda’s logic she and many of her colleagues should not involve themselves in the media, given their track record as activists. Her selective morality has no place in the media.
Yfm’s application was not “particularly bad”. The IBA doesn’t have the freedom to grant licences to “particularly bad” applicants. It can, and has, been taken on High Court review.
Mda knows that Yfm not only promised but has implemented policies no other commercial broadcaster has come close to. Yfm is 94% owned by black people. Yfm’s current staff complement of 39 comprises 92% black people, 36% women and the average age is 26 years. Yfm promised 30% local music and is currently playing more than 40% to an audience who previously didn’t have any choice of services.
Mda might not know it, but our huge audience in Gauteng, and the national advertising industry, know a media phenomenon when they see one.
Ironically Mopani Media, the company responsible for all of Yfm and a large part of the Midi applications, has twice been part of losing applications for radio licences when our applications were apparently not up to scratch.
As to the supposed “fictitious shareholding structure”, this is a bare-faced lie. Changes were made to the shareholding structure after Yfm had been awarded the licence and on the basis of a heads of agreement presented to the IBA at our hearing . The changes, made after consultation with the IBA, were incorporated into Yfm’s licence conditions. If Mda was confused by the change, a simple phone call would have put her in the picture.
In making her groundless claims against Yfm, Mda has committed the two cardinal sins of journalism. At no stage did she put her claims to anyone at Yfm.
Secondly, she has chosen to write on a matter in which she has an interest. This is unforgivable in journalism.
Besides her partner being a major shareholder in Jazz FM, one of the unsuccessful bids for the Gauteng regional licences, Mda was directly interested in the TV licence process as a member of the advisory board of New Channel, one of Midi’s competitors in the licence application. So she cannot claim to be a disinterested observer of the process.
Beyond Mda’s entirely improper attack on Yfm, her article is a litany of innuendo, rumour and conjecture .
When your newspaper publishes nonsense about Yfm and, entirely without evidence, claims that the deputy president “undermines the watchdog structures that have been put in place (by him among others) to safeguard democracy”, compares his actions to the worst excesses of the bantustan system, and describes him as a godfather before whom ‘democracy cannot be safe’, you stoop to the level of the gutter journalism of the past when articles like “Slovo the KGB agent” were the norm.
— Dirk Hartford is executive director of Yfm