The reedy voice of Nelson Mandela, punctuated by long pauses, crackles across the gulf of time as he makes his closing speech from the dock at the Rivonia Trial. Like the recorded speeches of Martin Luther King, Mandela’s ringing idealism sounds a deep and troubling note in your conscience, not just if you are white, but if you are human and guilty of compromise. None but the finest are prepared to die for freedom.
So it’s comforting when the radio commercial to which you have been listening switches from the voice of Mandela to an announcer who chirps that all the great man’s speeches are available on one CD at a record store near you. That’s it – rush off and buy. Possession, I think, is nine-tenths of denial: if you own it, it’s yours, predictable and known, and can’t ambush your spirit.
These thoughts are occasioned by watching a great deal of actuality television on assignment for The Media magazine. SABC’s Special Assignment. MNet’s Carte Blanche. e.TV’s Third Degree. And 50/50, Fokus and other magazine programmes with documentary slots. Why do these productions matter? They strike at the heart of our national identity and call attention to the ills of the rainbow nation.
The box is forever renewing its image of South Africans as a nation at the end of the universe, banquetting, as it were, on the truth – one of the fruits of our newfound freedom. We are uniquely fortunate to be living in this time and place, beyond apartheid, beyond the experience of most other societies. Pain mixed with pride in self-examination is the trademark of our special brand of documentary TV.
An investigative tradition has flourished over the 15 years since MNet’s Bill Faure dreamed up the idea of Carte Blanche in 1988. Presenters Derek Watts and Ruda Landman became virtual Sunday evening fixities in many homes. Ten years later, former Vrye Weekblad journalists Max du Preez and Jacques Pauw were commissioned by the SABC to produce a weekly programme, Special Assignment, on Tuesday nights. This carried on from the TRC Special Report, which had probed the grim past by reporting cases before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. At the turn of the millennium, e.tv launched Third Degree with Debora Patta as presenter and Sam Rogers as producer.
Hearing Mandela’s voice on air reminds us that radio has often been called the theatre of the mind. By comparison that doesn’t make television merely a portrayal of the visibly obvious. Visuals carry their own depth of impact. With ruses like the use of hidden cameras and ironic voice-overs to highlight lies and hypocrisy, television can be a powerful, evocative reportorial medium.
In the view of founding editor of the Mail & Guardian Anton Harber, long-format documentary TV leads the media in terms of investigative, exposé journalism. And it’s great theatre too. Some for instances: no blacks allowed in Free State resort, on Third Degree, showing executive producer Sam Rogers being physically assaulted when the resort owner tried to snatch her undercover mini-camera (‘FUCK THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA” proclaimed a banner, with Vierkleur flags for backdrop). Or police setting dogs on Mozambiquan immigrants, on Special Assignment, showing culpable SAPS members recording their own actions on video, leading to a national outcry against police brutality and the chief perpetrators being jailed. Or cruelty to elephants at Brits game ranch, on Carte Blanche, giving viewers access to video material showing animal abuse at a wildlife trading company owned by Riccardo Ghiazza (the elephants were removed by the SPCA after court battles and the owner successfully prosecuted).
The examples abound, from the horrors of HIV infection in Hillbrow to sleazy deals in the provinces and Pretoria. Long may freedom of the airwaves last—but don’t count on it. Special Assignment’s executive producer, Jacques Pauw, speaking about whether he will mount an investigation into bribery allegations surrounding Deputy President Jacob Zuma, maintained that he could do a piece if he wanted to [see panel]. One tends to believe him, but with an election coming up and a creepy sense that the honeymoon of liberation is over, we all have to wonder.
Indeed, former SABC presenter and veteran TV journalist Pat Rogers recently lodged a case against his old employers with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCCSA), making precisely the point that censorship is alive and well and living in Auckland Park. He accused the SABC of a material omission and self-censorship for not covering the Scorpions’ case against Zuma – or at least ignoring it for two weeks while newspapers were full of it. The BCCSA dismissed the case, saying that ‘once SABC News had investigated the issue [it] was able to present a balanced report”.
Fair or foul? The same body that found against Rogers has often ruled in favour of the actuality programmes and against complainants, in effect widening the boundaries of free expression. But producers have occasionally run afoul of the Commission. Prof Kobus van Rooyen, chairman of the panel and a former censor under the old white regime, found that e.tv was biased in its presentation of a programme on the issue of the adoption of children by gays and lesbians.
Presenter Debora Patta, according to a member of the public, ‘wouldn’t let the poor girl that was putting the case for normal people and normal families get her point across at all: it was really unprofessional”.
Fact is, there is always going to be a large dose of advocacy in actuality programming – it’s unavoidable, and it’s right. Years ago when I lectured in journalism at Rhodes, the department was honoured with a visit by David Halberstam, one of the reporters who covered the infamous My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. Remember? American troops in another war and another era mowed down a whole village full of women, children, and grandfathers. ‘Trust the victims,” said Halberstam, to an eager class of journ students, ‘you’ll get the best slice of truth from them, always bearing in mind that nobody tells the whole truth”.
And none of this cheapens the informational content of the probing image. Television has a unique ability to enlarge the public sphere of debate by humanising its subjects in a way that no other medium can, through direct personal portrayal. Which brings us to the differences between the major actuality programmes. They differentiate themselves in style and subject matter, not just in pursuit of truth, but in pursuit of those all-important audience ratings (ARs) that determine commercial viability.
‘It was certainly hard,” says Debora Patta of Third Degree, ‘to break into a small market that was already saturated with current affairs programmes. But news and current affairs are key brands of e.tv and it was critical that we also establish ourselves as serious journalists. We’ve had to claw our way to the top and are proud to say we have finally made it into the number one spot, generating higher ARs than both Special Assignment and Carte Blanche.”
Third Degree’s current average ARs are coming in between 4.2 and 4.9. The AR figure represents the percentage of total TV audience that watches a programme, and to set this in context the highest AR of all is for the locally produced soapie, Generations, on Mondays, averaging around 18.8.
Here’s Jacques Pauw on the topic: ‘Since our inception in July 1998, our ARs have ranged from a lowest 2.2 to a highest 10.6. Special Assignment’s ARs are very subject-driven, although we are often the biggest current affairs show in the country. At the moment, we are going through a phase where our ARs are relatively low, around 3.5 for the last four or five months. Hopefully it will pick up again.”
George Mazarakis, executive producer of Carte Blanche, had no need to defend the programme’s ARs because with a fee-paying audience it is not in direct competition with free-to-air e.tv or public broadcaster SABC. Nevertheless, Carte Blanche ARs hover around 2.5-3 (the highest for the station is Egoli, another local soapie, at 5).
In an interview, Mazarakis pointed out something else. Carte Blanche sees itself as a magazine actuality programme with strong investigative elements, so it carries ‘wacky human interest features” along with more combative material. Third Degree and Special Assignment, meanwhile, have each developed formats of their own – the former is presenter-led, the other not; the former carries a variety of items, the other focuses on one issue a week. Both draw on a culture of investigative journalism, owing much to both broadcasting and newspapering experience.
Sam Rogers of Third Degree covered political violence in the townships for Radio 702 and later did a stint as news producer for the Asia Bureau of the British station, ITN. In 2001 Rogers shared the CNN African Journalist of the Year Award with competitor Jacques Pauw. For his part, Pauw ascribes the success of Special Assignment to the print background of its staffers.
‘I am not sure that the best journalism is always found in longer format TV programmes, as Anton Harber suggested, but if it is, it is probably because newspapers are increasingly staffed by young journalists. Five years ago we recruited the core of our staff from newspapers and by then they already had substantial experience as investigative reporters. We can usually choose from the best that is available in journalism as Special Assignment is seen as a prestigious (often wrongly so) place to work at.”
Prestige is certainly part of the actuality game. All programmes mentioned here (including 50/50, with its eagle eye on the environment and wildlife) have won awards; Special Assignment in particular is covered in recent decorations for bravery on the frontiers of journalism. Their reporter-cameraman sleuths have narrowly escaped death and disaster in the cities and badlands of Africa a number of times. This doesn’t seem to worry them as much as not having the money to pursue stories to the end. ‘It can cost R100,000 to produce a 30-minute documentary on Africa,” says Pauw, ‘and like everywhere else, the SABC is also tightening the money belt.”
Patta agress. ‘The biggest difference between, say, a BBC and e.tv is budget. They can literally do anything and go anywhere for as long as they need to. We are limited in our travel but that does not compromise the journalistic quality of our stories. And South Africa is so rich with stories. Journalists are extremely fortunate in the issues they get to cover.”
Is that good news or bad news for the rest of us? We haven’t chosen to live in interesting times, but we do, and the mirror that actuality TV holds up to us is unflatteringly shocking. Worried? Want to duck abroad? Guilt will ambush you anyway.
No Zuma Gag on Special Assignment
It was reported early in September that with an election coming up, SABC station managers had been ordered in a secret memo to avoid broadcasting programmes involving ‘political discourse”. The issue of the Jacob Zuma corruption allegations was specifically mentioned as one of the topics to be ‘avoided absolutely”. News and current affairs programmes would cover matters that are political, said the memo, while all other programmes, content and talk shows should steer clear.
Asked whether the reported ban applied to Special Assignment, producer Jacques Pauw denied ever having received orders to avoid a subject. ‘There has never been an attempt to gag us,” he said. ‘As a matter of fact, the editors don’t even preview the programmes. Obviously we discuss sensitive or difficult stories with the editors and sometimes with the legal advisors. Any newspaper journalist would do this too.”
Regarding coverage of the Zuma affair and corruption in general, he said if Special Assignment chose to do the story ‘we would not be asking permission”. He went on: ‘We would go ahead and work out how to do it then consult with our editors and lawyers. Naturally with a story like the Zuma affair there could be political fallout and legal suits, so we would always discuss that in advance.”
Pauw said it was difficult to portray corruption onscreen. ‘How do you put a whole charge sheet in visual terms?” But Special Assignment has done stories on corruption in Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape.
‘We have already approached Bulelani Ngcuka [the National Director of Public Prosecutions] to do a piece on him. On Friday last week I had a discussion with Jimi Matthews, head of TV news, about how to do the Jacob Zuma story. At this stage I am just discussing it with colleagues and no decision has been taken. One problem is that the Zuma story would have to fit into half an hour, and the format of Special Assignment doesn’t allow for a discussion to follow.”