“Didn’t it evoke any laughter?” – Barney Pityana to Claudia Braude on the Mail & Guardian’s Machiavelli cartoon which she said demonised Thabo Mbeki
“I wasn’t looking at that.” – Braude replies
“If I had been a journalist I would have embraced a process like this.” – Braude on the Human Rights Commission probe into racism in the media
“Claudia was looking at the media with a microscope, while we had applied a wide- angle lens to look at the forest and not at the trees as Claudia did.” -Edward Bird, Media Monitoring Project director
“Braude went in search of racism in the media – and found it everywhere, much like the apartheid regime used to discover reds under every bed and behind every bush.” – Professor Guy Berger
“You know, some talk darkly of the power of the press, but it is, in fact, the power of the people. The power of newspapers, to my mind, is a fiction arising from the illusion we create, by our anticipation of the public, that we lead. No newspaper can long survive which does not tune itself to the public and react to its needs, demands and expectations.” – Phillip van Niekerk, editor of the M&G
“We have had to ask ourselves countless times why we have attracted this kind and ferocity of criticism. We have searched our actions, our minds and – dare I say it – our souls. And the best explanation we have managed to arrive at is that there are several strata – from sections of the black elite who have benefited most from liberation in South Africa to sections of the white population craving to ingratiate themselves with that elite – who fear an independent voice such as our own. They fear a voice that speaks directly, strongly, without favour – and without apology.” – Van Niekerk
“If we are not careful, this inquiry into racism in the media will turn out to be nothing of the kind; it will merely turn on who is to define what racism means; and, once that is decided, all else will follow.” – Howard Barrell, the M&G’s political editor