Phillip van NiekerkL:FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
One of the great myths of our industry is that the press is “powerful”. This dates back, no doubt, to the days when The Times was “The Thunderer” – its correspondents, like Morrison of Peking, enjoying the status of ambassadors in foreign countries.
Since then that power has been reduced by diversity. But the myth lives on, among other things in the attention which tends to be given at this point in an election campaign to which political parties newspapers will “give” their support.
The myth of that power remains even though most of the English-language press supported the Democratic Party last time, and it failed to secure more than 2% of the vote. The African National Congress, which won endorsement from only a handful of papers (the Mail & Guardian among them), romped home with more than 60%.
The secret to the “power” of a newspaper – and its editor – is its ability to read opinion in its chosen sector of the market; to anticipate readers’ reactions to events fast enough to be able to give the impression of leadership.
That the power of the reader is greater than that of the editor was brought home to me at an early stage of my arrival in this chair when, based purely on my personal prejudice and a sense that it was too American, I tried to dump the cartoon strip Doonesbury, and was surprised by a reader revolt of such proportions I was obliged to reinstate it.
Who are the M&G’s readers? A South African editor’s dream: youngish, intelligent, educated, upwardly mobile, detribalised (the racial split is slightly in favour of black), progressive in their social and political outlooks, and bolshy as hell.
What do they think? This is my (educated) guess: our readers are critical of aspects of the government’s rule, such as corruption, the appointment of weak ministers to portfolios requiring urgent attention and its failure to get on top of the problems of crime, education and unemployment.
But they recognise that the idealism born of the freedom struggle is still there, even if it is obscured by dust rising from the stampede for self-enrichment. The heart of the party is still in the right place even if some of our readers are nervous of Thabo Mbeki, the centralisation of power and the marginalisation of leaders like Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale and Pallo Jordan.
At the same time, many of our readers are longing to see a real opposition, preferably one from the left. Democracy would be given real meaning by having a credible alternative to vote for. But at the moment, a cursory glance at the opposition – even the DP with the Delports and Bruces on board – cannot help but turn the M&G faithful back to the ANC.
So logic leads one to plump for the ANC. If it is of any interest, I had intended voting for the ANC before a thief disenfranchised me by nicking a bag with my bar-coded ID in it at Johannesburg International airport. But I would not for a moment try to advise you, the reader – your vote is too powerful for the press to presume to do that.