Ferial Haffajee : A Second Look
I wrote this while bound in leg braces – so steadfast was the determination not to be knee-jerk. It is, therefore, a much considered and chewed-upon view that the Human Rights Commission’s proposed inquiry into the media is the worst news possible.
It is a view not coloured by the liberal owners and editors of this newspaper (for I am no automaton), but an innate sense that something as serious as an inquiry into as nebulous a topic as “racism in the media” must surely be anathema to this profession I love.
It is a muck-raking, shit-stirring, adrenalin rush of an occupation geared towards keeping society on its toes by doing what it does best: being a pain in the backside.
A commission of inquiry coming when and from whence it does will have the impact of numbing the pain. It will make the media quiescent and acquiescent. And it seems to have started already.
The week has been awash with many editors welcoming an Human Rights Commission-hosted confessional. Witness The Star’s editor Peter Sullivan and his team in a Tuesday leader entitled “Media probe not a problem”.
They wrote: “The enemy is not the Human Rights Commission, but racism which keeps reconciliation beyond reach. If we are to move forward as a nation, the media should take seriously the perception that it violates the rights of a section of the population.” Pass me the motherhood and apple pie.
Despite the commission’s contention that it had long considered a media inquiry, it was catalysed by a complaint laid by the Association of Black Accountants of South Africa and the Black Lawyers’ Association.
Members of these organisations are the front runners of South Africa’s growing black elite. They, their connections and fellow surfers on the crest of the wave of black empowerment, have been catapulted into leading public and private sector positions.
This has brought media attention: much of it laudatory and some of it downright pain- in-the-butt embarrassing but must-read tales of nepotism, graft, broedertwis and unholy alliances that are inevitable in the world of rapid capital accumulation.
That there will be more is an African and global certainty – multinational businesses operate that way in emerging markets like ours.
In this atmosphere there is no underestimating the importance of a snooping, inquiring, suspicious and questioning media.
A commission now will undercut this journalistic instinct with considerations that shouldn’t be the concern of any self- respecting hack or her editor.
We will begin to temper stories by looking at the colour of the subject. If it’s white it’s all right, if it’s black, get back, get back!
Will we interrogate the policies of Alec Erwin but steer clear of tackling Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele for fear of being labelled racist? And if the probe indeed finds that the media is racist, will its report become an easy scapegoat for the myriad shysters who can declare any article yet another example of a “racist media”? It is a slippery slope best not even mounted.
That the commission was stirred into action by the views of a small and irked elite peeved at the press for attacking black role models means that their often-flawed argument struck a chord loud enough for its chair, Barney Pityana, to declare an expensive and time-consuming inquiry.
If, as Pityana has said, one set of rights cannot be weighed up against others, then why has he not declared similar class action-type inquiries against the Department of Land Affairs and the Land Restitution Commission for their failure to redistribute land? Against the Department of Housing for building so few houses? Against the owners of sweat-shops for violating economic rights? Against the judiciary for failing to bring rapists to book, and so stripping half the population of its freedom of movement?
Everyday, there are sectors and institutions of this society which violate rights by commission, not omission. (Read the complaints of the accountants and lawyers and it is clear that often they speak of racism by omission.)
The media inquiry may be carried out in the name of the masses – in reality, it will be a probe instigated by an elite with little concern for the masses of historically disadvantaged South Africans it purports to speak on behalf of.
This inquiry seems like a dance from a cash-strapped watchdog with little bite to a government which has been whistling this media-tune for many years. It would be disingenuous to say that they have nothing to whistle about.
Says Hugh Lewin, the director of the Institute for Journalism: “There’s nobody in the media who can hold up their faces, smile and say ‘We’ve done away with racism’.”
It is not that the media is of a higher order that is beyond scrutiny, but that the answers lie not in an Orwellian inquiry into racism in the media.
That inquiry will bring only self- deprecating breast-beating or open defiance, not to mention reams of journalistic navel-gazing of interest to very few readers, listeners and viewers.
Instead Pityana and company should take a page from the Commission on Gender Equality whose careful media strategy has brought a sea change in the coverage of rape, battery, femicide, witch-burning and its other campaigns.
If the Human Rights Commission is serious about highlighting rights abuses, it should spend its money on a spin doctor’s course and not on an inquiry into an institution that has increasingly become the favoured whipping boy of the new establishment.