Robert Kirby
CHANNELVISION
At what stage, I wonder, will SABC upper management, let alone its board, decide to exercise some authority and bring the crude excesses of its television news department under some sort of control? The department quite clearly believes itself to be immune to any sort of restraint, nor does it deem necessary the exercise of even the most primary rules of acceptable public conduct.
The current prerogative of the SABC television news department has become that of the brute. It is apparently not sufficient for this department to report and reflect, among other things, on the deep corruption in South African life. The SABC news department seems to have decided that its scope includes a perceived duty to contribute to a prevalent contamination.
What follows is a letter of complaint, written to a Cape Town morning newspaper, by Professor GJ Knobel, head of the department of forensic pathology at the University of Cape Town. I reproduce it here so that it may reach a wider readership and also in the absurd hope that someone at the SABC will take action – if not, then at ministerial level. The letter was written in response to the showing on national television of the mutilated faces of two murder victims. The letter has been slightly shortened
“I write on behalf of my whole department and myself, to express our disbelief and horror regarding the SABC news bulletins (on June 14) in which the mutilated faces of the late Brenda Fairhead and her daughter, Kia, were shown.
“We … reject with contempt the SABC’s explanation that sensitive viewers were warned before the broadcast started. If anyone may be regarded as less sensitive, due to the nature of our work, it would be my colleagues and myself. Yet we all experienced shock and anger at the insensitivity of this broadcast. We were outraged and saddened at the unnecessary additional trauma that it caused the family and friends, as described by them in the media.
“In my 36 years of involvement … I, on my part, out of respect for the bereaved relatives and the general public, have never allowed the publication of sensitive photographic material for the sake of sensationalism.
“As health care officials we also subscribe to the ethical principle of confidentiality of information, even after the death of a person, and will therefore not supply such material to the media. It is, however, possible to obtain the material from court or police records.
“One would have presumed that the SABC and its management would display the necessary sensitivity and common decency not to inflict, once again, the horror of the murders onto relatives and friends of the deceased, as well as the general public, in this brutal way.
“We regard this inexcusable event as the worst possible violation of the privacy of Mrs Fairhead and her daughter, Kia. Our condolences go out to them.”
To Professor Knobel’s complaint may be added the recent evidence of many other images, the daily symptoms of televisual degeneracy: SABC news cameras investigating body parts at a road accident; the gloating inspections of blood stains, what remains the near criminal complicity of the SABC Special Assignment team in the pitiless flogging of some teenagers. The list goes on and on.
The standard SABC excuse about sufficient warning being given is, in truth, an exacerbating factor; it is open to and often exploited as an excuse for the inclusion of grossly offensive material. In news broadcasts no general warning is given, the warning comes only before particular items. Therefore, when it comes to children being exposed to what amounts to an almost obligatory daily plunge into the pornography of violence, the ritual “sensitive viewers warning” caveat is quite worthless. Adults do not always oversee what their children see. To assume that every child watching a television news broadcast is constantly being monitored by an adult, is both unrealistic and ridiculous.
The real reason behind what are becoming almost daily warnings of this nature is, as I say above, that they are used as an excuse by the SABC news department to indulge in the journalistic practices of the gutter. The little ritual about “sensitive viewers” is being grossly abused.
It will be interesting to see how, or indeed whether the SABC responds to Professor Knobel’s letter. I will be surprised if it does. Its news department has long since demonstrated that it believes itself to be a functional entity in the current political establishment; therefore under control separate to SABC management.