Like all professions, the profession of journalism has its institutional hierarchies. Some news organisations are more exalted than others, possess a deeper gravitas, lend greater clout to one’s résumé. Regrettably enough, the upper echelons of the newsroom order of merit – determined more by a consensus of respect amongst journalists themselves than the obligatory collection of awards and accolades – has never really endured a serious onslaught from South African brands. Could be the fault of our dark past, could be that our newsrooms don’t have the financial muscle to recruit and retain the talent, or it could simply be that we’re a victim of the developed world’s hegemony over news production – the unavoidable fact is that foreigners remain as dominant as ever in the prestige stakes. Our journos want to work for them.
Which makes the Jimi Matthews story pretty fascinating. ‘Everything I’ve done, all the foreign work, was to impress local people—hoping that a South African newspaper or magazine would regard me as good enough and offer me a job,” says Matthews. ‘When e.TV employed me, I had finally achieved payment in Rands.”
His coveted drop in salary was a long time coming. At the beginning of his career, when he was barely out his teens, Matthews had a photograph published in the esteemed French newspaper Le Monde. It was around then that he first approached the Argus. The people at the Cape Town daily gave him the short answer. ‘We’ve already got a coloured photographer,” they said.
The appointment as head of news at e. happened in 1998, after over twenty years of full-time and contract employment for the likes of Reuters, NHK of Japan, NBC and CBS. During those years he had travelled the length and breadth of Africa to cover its most intense conflicts, directed a number of documentaries, and held photographic exhibitions in London, Frankfurt, Stockholm and Amsterdam. He had been awarded a scholarship to study in France, done a stint for the United Nations, and graduated from the London Film School.
Not completely out of character for someone in this line of work, there’s a counterpoint to the above litany – perhaps to be taken with the proverbial pinch. ‘I spent virtually my whole life resisting becoming a journalist,” Matthews says. Apparently, his early aspirations were architecture and the theatre.
‘I had the good fortune of selecting a father who was a reporter for Drum and the Golden City Post. I was aware of the great global newspapers at an early age—the Guardian (then known as the Manchester Guardian), the Observer, the New York Times. There’d be a paper on the table every morning, and my father would always ask me what was in it.”
Matthews’s father, best known as the poet and writer James Matthews, would also insist that he listen to classical music when he returned to the family home in the ‘very typical Cape flats ghetto” after school. There he’d find the familiar cast of authors, photographers and media types, whom he remembers as an unsavoury yet politicised bunch that responded to apartheid by being smarter than their nationalist masters. Although Matthews maintains he didn’t much like this crowd and was wary of becoming one of them, there’s no mistaking the gratitude, however understated. ‘A number of people that irritated me as a child I later realised were significant political figures,” he says.
So how many ‘significant political figures’ irritate Matthews now that he’s the head of television news at the SABC?
‘In the position I’m in, it would be naïve to believe people don’t try influence me. I will listen to criticism, but I will not be told what to do. I’ve never been told what to do.”
To be sure, the SABC board and various ministerial string-pullers knew what they were getting when they lured Matthews away from e. last year. This is clearly a man who doesn’t have a price. There’s one anecdote (another involving a phone call to a cabinet minister at four in the morning can’t be repeated) about a Reuters cost-cutting exercise back in 1988. Matthews was then Reuters TV’s most senior producer in southern Africa, well respected by the brass in London, and in line for a cushy posting in a European bureau unless he did something stupid like insult the chairman’s wife at a formal gala. The trauma of having to fire half his staff, journalists he’d literally ‘gone to war with”, was so intense that he summarily quit the job.
Of course, the upside for his current employers is that he’s helluva dedicated and knows his stuff. A fourteen hour day is a common occurrence, and he’s the only head of news at the SABC in the last decade who’s had any television experience – his predecessors all being prominent newspaper people. ‘The head can now go into the editing room and cut a piece, or engage a cameraman when he cocks it up,” says Matthews. ‘It makes some people pretty uncomfortable.”
It seems he’s equally firm on the content. ‘A number of my staff insist on taking their cue from the commercial media. It’s often necessary to remind them we have a public service mandate.”
But surely the commercial media are a serious threat? If not, why is there a framed copy of the Sunday Times poster headline ‘Seven o’clock News War” leaning against the office wall like it’s waiting to be hung?
‘That’s a present from someone,” says Matthews. ‘Naturally people make the connection given my recent background, but the decision to move the English bulletin to seven wasn’t motivated by e.TV. It would be easy to concentrate my energies on taking on e.News in a ratings war, but then I would be forced to neglect my other bulletins.”
A fair comment. Matthews is required to put out 12 bulletins in eight languages every day. He is responsible for a further four current affairs programmes. Whichever way you cut it, the decisions he makes impact upon the lives of 20 million people. And on this score, he has one overriding objective: ‘I’m very serious about the language mandate. It’s hugely important that we find a way of elevating the marginalised languages. It’s what the public and the constitution demand of us.”
Oh, there’s a final remark Matthews insists goes in. ‘Besides my family and news, the most important thing to me are the fortunes of Orlando Pirates. People who’ve worked with me will tell you it’s an extremely career-limiting move to make disparaging remarks about the Bucs.”