Mail & Guardian reporter
The Human Rights Commission (HRC) has thrown out a complaint of subliminal racism laid against the Mail & Guardian and Sunday Times newspapers by the Association of Black Accountants and the Black Lawyers Association.
The request for an investigation was turned down “because the issue of racism in the media is not confined to the two newspapers alone”, the commission decided this week. Instead, the commission will hold a general inquiry into racism in the media.
The last time such an inquiry into the mass media was held was in the 1980s during PW Botha’s rule. A leading media lawyer has warned that the inquiry “is scarcely opportune or to be welcomed. [It] will place the [commission] in the untenable position of pronouncing upon the content of newspapers at the risk of seriously threatening editorial independence, the free flow of information and freedom of expression.”
The complaint alleged the newspapers were guilty of “violations of the fundamental rights of black people”. The 44-page submission included allegations of hate speech against the Sunday Times and a content analysis of the M&G between January and June 1996.
The analysis found that the M&G had reported 14 cases of corruption involving blacks and four involving whites – a claim disputed by the M&G. The association claimed that this reporting was disproportionate because there are more whites than blacks in leading public- and private-sector positions.
The Sunday Times came under fire for allegedly trivialising black deaths, because it carried only three lines on a Richmond killing and these had been “mentioned along with the death of six elephants”.