Respected writer Mandla Langa seems set to leave the comparative quiet of heading the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) and move over to the punchbag post of CEO at the public broadcaster.
Since last year, the CEO job includes the role of South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) editor-in-chief — another of the pressures that led previous incumbent Peter Matlare to quit his contract prematurely.
So, as the top man also responsible for content, Langa will find himself in the firing line about SABC news. Most of the criticisms seem to centre on the role of the corporation’s MD of news, Snuki Zikalala.
Dene Smuts of the Democratic Alliance dumped on Zikalala last week for what she dubbed his ”frank admission” on World Press Freedom Day that the public broadcaster is not neutral. Her sound bite: ”The news has turned into a presidential diary.”
Earlier this year, her boss, Tony Leon, also laid into the hapless hack: ”Under the direction of news chief Snuki Zikalala, the SABC performs its watchdog role by baring its teeth at the opposition and wagging its tail at the government.”
Further catchy crits came last week from a group called the Southern Africa Journalists’ Association, alleging that Zikalala is ”a self-avowed party man”, and indirectly branding him a ”drooling sycophant”.
And a loaded news report from the South African Press Association read: ”The Freedom for Expression Institute recently asked for an investigation into the independence of the broadcaster. This came in the wake of reports that Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang had ordered [my italics] Zikalala to send a television team to a media conference.”
So, what’s going on? Assuming he does get the job, will Langa really have to deal with a black Cliff Saunders in charge at the SABC?
Not quite. Langa will take the attacks on Zikalala with an awareness of whence they come. Those emanating from the DA are opportunistic political point-scoring — rhetoric to be expected, and a little like e.tv’s understandably self-serving publicity about its political independence.
Many other criticisms of Zikalala are part of a bash-SABC culture. These are knee-jerk hangovers of our experience of past abuse of public broadcasting. But such alarm-ringing needs something more substantive if it is to carry contemporary clout.
In short, Langa will need a more thoughtful critique of SABC news if he is to act on what the corporation’s critics see as its controversial commissar.
He’s too nuanced, for example, to do the obvious topple into the trap of whether journalism can be ”neutral”. It is a meaningless debate without spelling out what Zikalala or anyone else means by the word.
He will be unlikely to join the chorus that simplistically strips Zikalala of any shred of editorial integrity — a noise that, in effect, accuses the man of defying both the legal requirement that the SABC must be independent and the corporation’s internal code of practice that explicitly states ”the SABC is not the mouthpiece of the government”.
Rather, what Langa should consider is what Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee diagnosed recently: the deeper issue of the SABC interpreting ”public broadcasting as informing the public of the government’s agenda”.
It’s a perspective about the role of SABC news that was evidently assumed by Tshabalala-Msimang when she asked (not ordered) Zikalala to cover her press conference.
No one would deny that the public should be informed about the government’s agenda, and Zikalala cannot be censured for this. The challenges are about how to cover the government, not whether. And it’s complex.
The first difficulty is that all ministers, not just Tshabalala-Msimang, think their news conferences are critical. No doubt, some indeed are. Yet there’s not enough time to feature them all, let alone still give space to other arenas of news. So, Langa needs to look at the balance and prioritisation criteria.
A second problem relates to whether the SABC covers the government with proactive and independent journalists asking the tough questions — or whether its reporters simply reflect the government on its own terms.
It’s insufficient to make anecdotal assessments on these issues, without research and without explicit benchmarks.
And this is where Langa’s background in Icasa comes into the picture. It’s Icasa that is supposed to hold the SABC accountable and evaluate whether its news befits a public broadcaster in a democracy.
Yet it’s only in recent months that the regulator has begun spelling out some measurable licensing conditions for the SABC — criteria by which it can then assess the broadcaster’s performance.
And here it gets interesting, because Langa at the SABC will now be subject to a system over whose terms he has presided. That could make it all a bit tricky.
However, there’s something in sight that could be of assistance to the new SABC head. This is a new ISO 9000-style standard for public broadcasting.
The schema does not assess actual content output — a near-impossible task. Instead, it measures the existence (or not) of effective systems for quality information generation and genuine editorial independence. Audience satisfaction levels are included as a benchmark.
For any media operation to be rated in terms of the standard, the Swiss-based agency awarding the certificate requires that accredited external auditors do the monitoring and evaluation. This, in turn, guarantees transparent and independent international judgement about whether a public broadcaster is indeed doing the job it is supposed to do.
Known as ISAS BC 9001, the standard may be just the thing to help a new CEO build greater consensus around the SABC’s performance — including Zikalala’s role at the news helm.
Such a reference point could be a hallmark of Langa’s leadership at the SABC. And even if it turns out he’s not the face of the SABC’s future, the standard could still serve whoever does get the job.
The corporation needs all the tools it can get if it is to serve society as a world-class public broadcaster.