Well, it is official: the media, as an institution in South Africa, is racist. So says the Human Rights Commission in the final report on its inquiry into the media. In case anyone thought this opinion might be qualified to some degree – as one ambiguous phrasing in the report seems to suggest – the HRC’s chair, Barney Pityana, dispelled any doubt at a press conference in Johannesburg on Thursday. The media, he said, was racist – and that was that. This comes as no surprise. Pityana declared in print long before the HRC panel started its investigation that the media was racist. And he said during the hearings that he expected to make a finding of racism. Now he has given this conclusion the imprimatur of his office. But is it true? We believe it is not. Certainly there is racism in the media. Yes, there are probably individuals, increasingly isolated, who harbour deep-seated racial prejudices. Plainly, there are historical, racially designated inequities still to be overcome in many media organisations, as in the rest of our country. Yes, there are instances of cultural insensitivity. And, of course, some people are hurt as a result of these shortcomings.
Editor after editor conceded these flaws before the HRC panel in March, and detailed their attempts to correct them. But do these shortcomings cumulatively make the media – and, as if by implication, those of us who work in it – racist? The HRC travels an odd route to the conclusion that these shortcomings do have that effect. Why odd? The commission does not evaluate the evidence of those who complained that the media was racist; nor does it assess the testimony of those editors who attempted to respond to the accusations. The commission says explicitly in the report that it sees no need to do so. Evidence is not important to the HRC. Instead, it says that it will rely on theory to reach a conclusion. The HRC’s journey into theory consists of a review of a number of recent, mainly Western, writings on racism. Arising out of this discussion, the commission then argues that, in identifying racism, what is important is not the intention of whoever is accused of racism but whether someone experienced an act as racist. It is this approach that equips the HRC to reach its central conclusion contained in the first and most important of its 11 findings: that the media is racist. It reasons thus: some people have felt racially offended or hurt by some products of some media on some occasions in South Africa; therefore the South African media is racist. Relying on the effect of an act when trying to identify whether or not it is racist has some respectability in South African law. This is the result of a judgement by Judge Pius Langa, deputy president of the Constitutional Court, in 1998. Judge Langa finds that it may not be necessary to prove that the perpetrator of an allegedly racist act had racist intent.
The HRC is, however, unwise in seeking support from Judge Langa’s judgement for its focus on the effects of an act in determining whether or not that act is racist. For Judge Langa stated in the same judgement that the fact of discrimination and of its unfairness “must be determined objectively in the light of the facts of each particular case”. The HRC, however, declined to test evidence or subject it to any objective measure. Instead, it relied on social analysis, which, it concedes in its final report, is “risky”. And so it is. For, as the HRC concedes, again in its final report, “social analysis is a subjective matter”. This final report of the HRC into alleged racism in the media is, regrettably, no more informative than that it tells us that the HRC feels that the South African media is racist. And that is a decidedly woolly conclusion – expensively arrived at – and one that is wholly inadequate for an organisation with its resources and constitutional mandate. It has only two notable recommendations. The first – very dangerous – is for legislation governing the disciplining of journalists. The other – potentially useful and progressive – is its call for greater diversity in the media. We at this newspaper were among the most stubborn opponents of the HRC inquiry when the commission seemed intent on coercing editors to appear before it to answer unspecified allegations of racism in an inquisitional process. We later, however, played a significant role in sponsoring the compromise that enabled the hearings to be conducted in a cooperative spirit. We did so because – notwithstanding the outrageous claims of racism made against us – we want an end to racism wherever and in whatever form it occurs. We were then, and are now, certainly not alone in the media in holding this view. For this reason we and others in the media had hoped that the HRC would throw some light on what actual forms racism takes in the media and how, in the situation in which we work, we can effectively address it. The HRC has, however, miserably failed us in this hope. It has, instead, produced a report – lazily researched, pretentious in its intellectualism and inept in its presentation – which merely rationalises its members’ rush to moral judgement.