OWN CORRESPONDENT, Braamfontein | Tuesday 7.15pm
BLACK journalists control the executive editorial decision-making of the majority of mainstream white-owned and controlled newspapers and the news services of both the public and private commercial broadcasters, the South African Human Rights Commission heard on Tuesday.
Making a submission into the HRC’s public hearings on racism, which resumed again on Monday, was e-tv channel director Quraysh Patel. Patel said that to deny that racial images are being challenged and transformed, is to deny the efforts of the new black-owned and controlled broadcast media.
Excellence in journalism is the best protection for media freedom; bad journalism is detrimental to it, he said. “Our view is that bad journalism is often mistaken for racism,” he told the HRC.
Also appearing before the HRC on Tuesday was Radio Pretoria, whose chairman chairman Mossie van den Berg denied the charge of racism levelled against the station. He said that the radio’s licensing conditions stipulate it is to serve the interests of the Afrikaner Boer community — which is Protestant, Christian and of Western origin and heritage, he added.
Van den Berg also lashed out at independent researcher Claudia Braude and the Media Monitoring Project (MMP), whose report forms the basis of the hearings.
He said Braude based her findings on the station’s daily news commentary which was published on its website at the insistence of English-speaking people.
Western Cape Muslim radio station Radio 786, however, said the report prepared by Braude has “considerable value” and “has laid the basis for further research on the role played by the media in reproducing and opposing racism in South Africa.”
The hearings will continue on Wednesday.