Last May, the trade union federation Cosatu launched the Labour-Community Radio Project (LCRP) in Johannesburg. The LCRP consists of inserts produced for broadcast on at least 40 community radio stations countrywide.
Speaking at the launch, Joe Nkosi, deputy president of Cosatu, commented: “The business community has hours of time each week on TV and radio and page after page in the newspapers and magazines to publicise their views, while the workers’ movement always has to struggle to get its news and opinions across—Let us hope that the SABC, which is supposed to be our public broadcaster – but which too often prefers importing cheap American programmes [to] dealing with the problems of ordinary South Africans – will learn from this project and start to carry the same kind of labour programmes on all of their stations.”
The SABC bosses may have listened. In early March this year, the SABC announced a weekly “Labour Focus” insert in conjunction with the people behind the LCRP. The programme will be flighted on the flagship news station SAfm. What is significant about the programme is that workers’ issues will now have premium time on a mainstream station.
That in a context where Cosatu remains on the margins of most political debates in South African media, usually depicted as a self-interested actor engaged in power plays. Coverage is often confined to strikes and wage negotiations; on those occasions we are told that Cosatu is “flexing its muscles.” Meanwhile, voices representing business interests are generally depicted as neutral and constructive. As the Pretoria-based Media Tenor reported as recently as 2001, a very small number of articles surveyed (only 6% at the time) focused on substantive issues raised by trade unions, such as labour law reform, HIV/Aids, or the negative effects of privatisation on workers.
Watching from the US, it is clear that while not perfect (for example, the presenter will be the overworked and often under-prepared Vuyo Mbuli), the SAfm Worker’s World initiative is a good start, one that puts South Africa slightly ahead of US activists when it comes to democratising its media.
This was not always so. Historically, the US labour movement has understood the importance of having their own media to communicate with members and potential members, according to American communications professor Robert McChesney. McChesney recalls that from the late nineteenth century on, just about every trade union had its own newspaper. As late as the 1940s, 800 union newspapers reached 20 to 30 million Americans per week. With the advent of radio as a mass medium, some trade unions in big cities like Chicago even set up radio stations that successfully competed with commercially-driven media.
Post-World War II, corporations (with the aid of the US government) gained control of the airwaves and began to monopolise print media. This coincided, unfortunately, with an ideological shift within trade unions, many of which decided that organising around media was a waste of time. The result is that “today working class people get the lion’s share of their news and entertainment from the commercial media.” Like in South Africa (where only the Sowetan has a labour reporter), most US newspapers don’t even cover this “beat.” Those that do, such as the New York Times, generally focus on infighting within trade unions, or on personalities.
However, as McChesney points out, a few US trade unions are now beginning to recognise that mainstream media hampers their growth. One result has been the United Auto Workers investing in the United Broadcasting Network, a radio network consisting of 100 stations. But that is probably the most hopeful sign. “Aside from establishing a labour radio network, nobody in labour is aggressively organising on media policy issues, either in Washington, or at the local level,” writes McChesney. At least in South Africa, trade unions recognise the urgency.
Sean Jacobs is The Media’s correspondent in New York.