So, a freelance cameraman films a National Women’s Day address by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. He captures people protesting in favour of her predecessor, Jacob Zuma.
South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) news fails to broadcast the incident. Under pressure to explain why, its spokesperson apologises, saying the man arrived too late to take the pictures. Rival station e.tv then screens images showing the man did film the protest. What is going on?
Fast forward: two commissioners, this writer being one, are appointed by the SABC to investigate. Our findings: SABC TV missed the story because the cameraman never sent it the relevant pictures.
Why not? It’s because, as he films it all, the guy does not click what is going on. Instead, he stays faithful to what he believes the SABC wants: a National Women’s Day story — indeed, he even interviews Mlambo-Ngcuka on the topic. That’s largely what he sends and what is broadcast.
It is only on the next day, after the cameraman is dumped on for having missed the story, that he views his raw footage again. Only then does he register that this is not an ordinary toyi-toyi — these are angry activists chanting ”Zuma! Zuma!”.
It makes one recall the tale of a novice reporter sent out to interview the mayor. The hack returns saying, ”Sorry, no story.” Asked why, he responds: ”The man died of a heart attack.”
Story behind the story
In the National Women’s Day case, the cameraman is the first-line culprit. He failed to spot the news. But what exactly was the story? And the story behind the story?
To start with, even today, the man rejects his critics. He says the noise came from a fraction of the crowd in an adjacent marquee. He says the chanting did not go on long. He says it did not disrupt the deputy president’s speech.
It was, in short, not newsworthy — he says.
In contrast, the incident was a lead news item on e.tv on the day. The e.tv script says Mlambo-Ngcuka had to rush her speech. It uses the term ”booing” (despite the fact that in all the footage we saw, there was no one shouting ”Phansi Phumzile! [Down with Phumzile!]”).
Media24 reported that she ”had to deviate from her prepared speech to calm them down … and she eventually had to leave the podium”. A later South African Press Association report went as far as to claim the deputy president ”was booed off stage”.
SABC radio reporters on the scene filed real-time dispatches as the rally unfolded. When the protest happened, they ran it as the lead item: ”A small group of people shouted slogans in support of former deputy president Jacob Zuma at the Women’s Day rally at Utrecht.”
A wrap at the end of the day included the incident in the middle of the story. According to the report, ”a small vocal group” disturbed the address, and ”the deputy president even praised Zuma in an attempt to calm down the people”. It continued: ”Despite the unruly behaviour of some people, the celebrations continued late into the evening.”
What to make of all these versions? Simply, it’s murky as to where the truth actually lies. What is clear, however, is that newsworthiness is a highly elastic assessment.
Even so, most people agree the protest should have been covered. How, and with what words, is very important — but that is a different question. SABC TV did not cover it all: not with pictures, but also not even with words.
So, if the bulletin editors never received the images, why didn’t they just use words to tell the story, like their radio counterparts did? The answer: TV bulletin editors apparently did not listen to the SABC’s own radio reports — meaning that there are problems beyond the hapless freelancer at the rally.
The bigger picture
Indeed, the whole thing is higher and wider than one particular cameraman’s myopia:
- Take the matter of why a freelancer was hired in the first place. Answer: because the SABC believed that only he had access to microwave transmission facilities from the area. Therefore, using its own crew with a three-hour journey back to Durban would mean missing the deadline. (As a matter of fact, there is no clear reason why the SABC can’t also use the same Telkom facilities).
- Why not send a seasoned reporter to accompany the man, even if he is the one to transmit the footage? Because the SABC had worked with the cameraman for 10 years, and seem to have believed him to be journalistically competent.
- Why do the SABC’s radio reporters and the TV representative appear not to have communicated in the field? Because, since the demise of bi-media, the two platforms do their own thing.
There are further systemic problems in this whole saga.
Why, if SABC news managers did not see the need for an experienced person to cover the story, did they still not properly brief and debrief the person they sent? Answer number one: he falls between two centres, Johannesburg and Durban, and the reporting structure is confused. Answer number two: there seem to be no standard operating procedures in SABC news-gathering: no universal and routine briefing and debriefing of reporters.
This leads to another question, with even deeper ramifications. Under what special circumstances might there be a briefing/debriefing of reporters? Likely answer: probably when an assignment is likely to prove complex or challenging.
- So, was it anticipated by SABC news managers that the National Women’s Day rally could become such a story? It was not.
- Was it not foreseen that the new deputy president, entering the ”turf” of her ousted predecessor, might encounter some opposition, not least when the premier of the province has been hounded out of a rally in the recent past? It was not.
Next level: why weren’t the news managers alert to the possibility that Zuma’s people could protest at the rally? Here, we have to speculate.
The answer may be that their mindset is focused on the uneventful — that is, the ”routine” story. Why? Because for many of them, it is how they perceive their role as public-broadcaster employees. They are not alert to potential disruption entering their radar screens.
This is the opposite extreme of forever-critical journalists who behave in perpetual muckraking or oppositional mode. It is as problematic.
The point is that if your default setting consistently underplays rocking the boat, then it’s predictable that in choppy waters you may miss some important stories.
Internal climate
Thus, the questions come down to the internal climate(s) of SABC TV news production. It is indeed true that the National Women’s Day rally coverage is not a case of the SABC having a deliberate political bias to suppress news that embarrasses the ruling political grouping. After all, radio covered the story. But the failure in TV is possibly a symptom of a deeper culture.
Assume your starting point is to frame news to reflect stability rather than conflict. The effect is that you effectively report on a status quo in which a particular grouping is dominant. In this light, disruption undermines the consensus you are supposed to be reflecting. You are predisposed to constants, not to change.
What, however, if you report like this, only to find that change, even unpleasant change, happens? In this story, what if the pro-Zuma people subsequently assume political dominance? Might these erstwhile-ignored protesters not then decide it’s time to tilt the ship in a different direction?
And, presto, don’t you then have a recipe for a public broadcaster to waft with the political winds, rather than hold to a firm and independent course?
Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost policies, which undid the Eastern bloc more than 15 years back, gave good insight into what happens to media people who follow a ”line” — even a broad one. The Soviet Union’s opening-up of debate meant that state media faced huge confusion when faced with many lines. Which one to follow?
The same thing happened in many African countries in the 1990s. In some cases, broadcasters made the mistake of backing not just a single horse, but also the wrong one. The results crashed their credibility and their careers.
Yet, as purported public broadcasters, what they clearly ought to have done was to use the moment to assert broadcast independence and the open-mindedness appropriate to impartiality in everyone’s interests.
In its learning from the saga around the National Women’s Day rally coverage, the SABC has an ideal opportunity to affirm such an orientation.
By convening the commission and making the findings public, the SABC’s new CEO, Dali Mpofu, has sent out a strong signal to his staff and to the public. There’s much to be done.
The hurly-burly of news production in a mammoth media institution will inevitably see future mess-ups. But, with the hindsight of this incident, the mission needs to be to minimise their likelihood. And if they do happen, the lesson is to find out — fast, and with respect for the facts.
Else it won’t just be a cameraman represented as being slow off the mark; the national broadcaster will be painted as a bumbling bullshitter that concocts any old excuse to cover up why its staff were not on their toes.