The Mail & Guardian celebrates its 20th birthday at a time when our country’s journalism is the target of much criticism, even derision.
We hear all the time that the quality of our reporting is low because the papers are filled by young, inexperienced reporters; newsrooms lack the resources to allow journalists to spend sufficient time on stories and develop specialist knowledge; economic pressures — in a world where there are so many more media outlets chasing the same pool of advertisers — are greater than ever; and the result, we are told, is bad journalism and frequently unethical behaviour.
But the M&G‘s history throws a different light on this.
The M&G was a paper created in 1985, as The Weekly Mail, with almost no resources, a hostile advertising industry, a young and inexperienced staff and a propensity to break the prevailing rules and practices of the profession and the industry. So why, then, did the M&G succeed against all the odds? Why did it, above the more mainstream South African papers, develop an international reputation and win awards? Why then does it still exist?
I think it comes down to one thing, and it is worth thinking about when one contemplates the direction of our current journalism.
The paper had to push the boundaries. It had to be different from the mainstream media or there was no point to its existence, and this meant that we had to challenge the status quo and break the rules. It wasn’t just that we were more stridently anti-apartheid, but that we would cover things (like what the African National Congress in exile was saying, or what the internal movement was doing) not being covered by other papers. We had to redefine news: it wasn’t the boring and predictable stuff happening in Parliament, or the internal shenanigans of the ruling party, as most of the media assumed, but it was what was happening in the township streets and factory floors. And we had to cover it in a different way.
We often used first-person, eye-witness accounts. Sometimes we would create the story, such as when Phil Molefe went and signed up to mark exam papers, and showed how rotten the system was. Sometimes it was by being in places where others weren’t, such as when Patrick Laurence gave a vivid eyewitness description of the horrors of one of the first neck-lacings. Or it was just by drawing on the experiences of the people we had, such as when Thami Mkhwanazi wrote about his prison experiences, or Mondli Makhanya wrote about his township violence experiences.
To do this, we had to challenge the rules that governed what journalists could do under censorship legislation at the time. We had to do it cleverly, and try and stay one step ahead of the legal system — but when it came down to it, we were prepared to use unconventional, even extra-legal, ways to find and publish the news.
Somehow this rich mix caught the spirit of the time; we rode the wave of dissent and defiance that was running through the country. And when people queued up to help, or rallied to support us when the government threatened us, it wasn’t because we had lots of resources, or paid people well, or even had half-decent offices for them.
It was the content of our pages, and the attitude that burst out of it, that mattered. It was because we stood for certain things, and didn’t just strive to match the grey pseudo-objectivity of the mainstream press. Few said they couldn’t deliver good journalism in such poor working conditions, because they looked down the road at the big media companies where conditions were better and were dismayed at the middle-of-the-road stuff they were printing. Few expected managers to provide them the wherewithal, because they knew that great journalism would come from energetic and committed journalists, not bank managers.
The current thinking is that journalism needs to return to a strict set of ethical codes and guidelines, and there is an overwhelming concern with rules and self-regulation. There is a great deal of political and social pressure to conform to established norms and practices. And most reporting is reduced to steno-graphy: — writing down what is said in media releases, conferences and statements.
Of course, good journalism does require that young reporters know and follow the rules and study various codes of conduct. But great journalism challenges, questions, probes and is full of nasty surprises. It is about challenging, not following, rules. It comes from probing rather than probity.
It is self-evident that we live in different times, and some of the things we did then may not be appropriate now. It goes without saying that one should have a different attitude to rules and laws now that we live in a stable democracy under the rule of law. And it is true that the story is now a very different one.
But the imperative to produce groundbreaking journalism is still the same, and that requires finding new ways to capture the spirit of the times. Stenographic reporting requires that we record that there is currently a wave of protests about service delivery in various townships; real journalism means that we spend time and effort finding out what the texture of these peoples lives are like, what they are saying and thinking and what is driving them to such measures.
If there is something to be drawn from the history of the M&G, it is that when journalism is at a low point — as it was in 1985, and some say it is now -— the breakthrough comes from journalists with attitude and guts, those who are prepared to immerse themselves in stories in a new way and have an unflinching determination to get them into print. Judging by the recent Oilgate exposé, the result of a two-year investigation, there is still more of that at the M&G than anywhere else.
That’s why it is still going. Long may it do so.
Anton Harber was a joint founder editor of the Weekly Mail