Yearly retrospectives, when placed on the news value ladder, generally fall somewhere below the ‘dog bites man” wrung – not even close to newsworthy. They can also be a bit dodgy on interest quotient – has anyone ever got past page 2 of The Economist ‘Year in Review” supplement? So one can guess that the form’s popularity is more a function of the year-end fatigue of editorial departments than a response to bags of beseeching readers’ letters.
What’s the excuse for running a retrospective in February, then? In a word: unavoidable. This magazine claims an intelligent and provocative approach to South Africa’s media sector – we cannot pretend that the sector’s most damaging year since the country became a democracy never happened. And we couldn’t have run it last month because events were still unfolding around our deadline date.
Unfortunately President Mbeki will only be announcing the findings of the Hefer Commission about a week after this month’s deadline. But Judge Hefer said not to expect any surprises, so we won’t. If by some sick joke the unthinkable happens and Bulelani Ngcuka is pronounced an apartheid spy, our stance remains the same. Mona and Munusamy sold media down the river.
Their timing could have been better. While there’s never an ideal moment for senior journalists to flog (at bargain basement prices) the soul of the profession to politicos, the period leading up to an election is particularly regrettable. Even as this editorial is being written the SABC is taking flak from the broadcast regulator and opposition parties for covering the launch of the ANC election manifesto in vivid detail – lump that together with the Mona and Munusamy show and you have a ruling party that begins to view media as its pet monkey.
Our leading regular contributors Graeme Addison and Tawana Kupe both comment this month on the media’s role in the looming elections; the former on SABC radio news head Pippa Green’s fight to ensure fair and independent coverage, and the latter on the need to concentrate on the prospects for the poor and unemployed.
‘In case some in the media protest about my suggestion,” writes Kupe on page 48, ‘I say since you have already called the election for the ANC – because you really have no choice – you might as well find something of substance to focus on.”
From this magazine’s perspective, the attainment of that idea would be a real ‘man bites dog” story.