One can hardly turn a corner or move the dial on the radio without hearing some discussion about the media being in crisis or the media being used in the current war between Deputy President Jacob Zuma and National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka.
In this, the most divisive and damaging time in the history of post-apartheid media, we have been forced to navel-gaze. We have even had to answer the question that only politicians and NGO activists with too much time on their hands love asking: what is the role of the media in a democratic (transforming) society?
The answer is that our role is to cut through the bullshit, tell the truth and reflect society as it mutates. Our role is to reflect the diverse viewpoints and make sense of where our society is going and what societal players would like it to look like.
In a democratic society it is inevitable that people will try to use the media. That is common sense.
Practitioners know that people try to use journalists and media organisations all the time. We know that sources — however reliable — have agendas, good, bad and neutral. Media organisations are daily bombarded with information and tip-offs from “sources” ranging from the Bishopscourt granny who complains that the municipality has not cut the grass verges outside her house to the lobby groups who want the government to adopt their policies to politicians who want to push up their ratings. Even kwaito stars and soccer players try to use the media to promote their fortunes.
This is what happens in democratic societies. The duty and function of the journalist and media house concerned is to ask why this information is being given to them, interrogate the information, verify truthfulness and public interest and then act accordingly.
How we acquit ourselves in distilling fact from smear will determine how credible and strong the media that emerges from this saga will be. It is only the weak and the willing who allow themselves to be manipulated by interest groups. That is the test facing every journalist as the deluge of damaging information flows into our newsrooms every day.
It is our grappling with this test that has put media practitioners in a tricky situation. Long used to being the questioner, the scrutiniser and the chronicler, the media are finding themselves at the receiving end of questioning and analysis. Suddenly our elevated status of being the ones in a position to expose, analyse and damn has been subsumed by other actors on the societal stage.
It was inevitable that this would happen. In just 10 years of democracy, the South African media have developed enormous power and influence.
This power, deriving from the rights given to South Africans in the Constitution, has not, however, been handed to the media on a platter. It has come on the back of heady transformation battles and a determination by journalists to use the democratic space available to us.
No doubt mistakes have been made along the way and we are often not the cutting-edge media that this evolving democratic republic deserves and that we would like to be. And we have sometimes not been the paragons of virtue that we would like the people we report on to be.
Now the battle between the national director of public prosecutions and ANC heavyweights has forced us to ask this question and to interrogate whether we are doing our jobs properly.
This spat, more than any other event in the recent past, has made media practitioners (and society) realise just how powerful this institution has become — in fact, so powerful that journalists have become part of the story they were reporting.
With this realisation has come that uncomfortable question about who this powerful institution is accountable to. The answer — we arrogantly but correctly assert — is that we are accountable to our Constitution, our audiences, our fellow citizens and to the truth.
The truth is the cardinal virtue that all journalists swear an oath to and it is the basis of the integrity that makes journalists believable.
Just as the Catholic faith teaches that belief in the Holy Trinity, the virgin birth and resurrection pretty much puts you on your path to heaven, so in the religion of journalism we believe that if you swear allegiance to telling the truth articulately in all bitterness and sweetness, you deserve to be part of this special community. We pride ourselves on that and we scorn those who violate our commitment to the truth.
That is why in recent weeks we have moved to purge ourselves of those with a proclivity for stealing the ideas and words of others and passing them off as their own. Plagiarism is lying and that is the greatest sin a journalist can ever commit.
Unfortunately the plagiarism controversy involving well-known individuals coincided with the Ngcuka/Zuma saga and allegations of impropriety against another senior journalist, thus creating a perception that we are an industry in crisis.
While not at all downplaying the considerable damage that this row has caused, one can say with absolute certainty that we are not in crisis. We are merely at a crossroads and we have to choose a direction now.
The Ngcuka vs Zuma/Mac Maharaj row has created tensions in media circles and reopened schisms we hoped would be well on their way to healing. It has shown us the brittleness of our commitment to the rules of engagement: fairness, accuracy and absolute respect for the codes of our trade. The credibility of the journalistic profession has been compromised by the shady maneouvres, selective leaks and violation of ethical codes.
The only times the media have faced such a trying situation were during the very necessary Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) hearings into the media and the controversial Human Rights Commission’s (HRC) investigation into racism in the media. Everyone — from those who embraced to those who opposed the two processes — knew they would be painful and uncomfortable. In the case of the TRC hearings the country managed to establish the truth about the role of the media during the apartheid years and thus know what to do if we were to fully carry out our function of serving the people and not the powerful. The HRC inquiry was a much less useful exercise, giving a platform to whingers and not providing any useful insight into why the media does what it does.
This time the process is uglier, messier, unstructured and very divisive. But it’s also much more genuine and, as a consequence, its results may be much more useful.
The reasons for this are not difficult to fathom: the stakes are so much higher. Beyond the corruption and spying allegations lie reputations that powerful individuals want to protect at all costs.
With decades of liberation struggle involvement behind them, it is not just criminal prosecution and tarnished reputations that Zuma and Maharaj fear. They also have a stature that they want to retain intact so when they exit their bodies there will be songs of praise and dipped banners instead of scorn.
Ngcuka also wants to leave behind a legacy when he departs public office: the struggle lawyer who became a senior parliamentarian before moving on to build one of the world’s innovative criminal prosecution institutions.
With the saga presenting the African National Congress and its allies with one of the toughest political and moral dilemmas they have ever had to face, the powerful Fourth Estate could not avoid getting caught up in the row and being accused of all sorts of unseemly things.
Before the situation reaches the crisis levels that many are already ascribing to it, it is critical that we indulge in honest introspection and assess our commitment to the values that made us become journalists.
To reverse the gains chalked up over the past decade would be to waste the endless hours spent by many journalists, human rights activists and the majority of South Africans in building up one of the world’s most open societies. It would be a great disservice to the millions of ordinary people who, despite the rantings of the chattering classes, actually trust the media a lot more than they trust other organs of society.
We have to go back to the principles and values that inspired the griots long before the days of Gutenberg and Marconi.