In one episode of that brilliant television drama set in the White House, West Wing, two of the incumbent president’s aides are discussing who to endorse as his replacement. ”What happened to the days when a few crusty old men sat in a smoke-filled room and chose the candidate over cigars and port? They didn’t choose so badly. They chose men like Roosevelt and Truman,” one of them says.
I don’t know what happened in the United States to change this, but I do know what happened in this country. The minister of health, bless her soul, banned smoke-filled rooms, forcing things out into the open. The current obsession in the media is with who will win, but I am more concerned about the process — whether we succeed in strengthening our democratic institutions and public participation in them.
Already, it is clear that those who thought it could be done behind closed doors as an internal ANC matter have been thwarted. The question now is whether the media can force the build-up to the ANC conference into a full-blown primary campaign in which we debate substantially what kind of person we want and with what kinds of policies. Will this process empower South Africans to take part in crucial decisions, or will they feel it is distant and beyond their influence? Indeed, will candidates be able to declare themselves at some point, or will they continue to be threatened with decapitation when they do?
Can we in the media play the role we should in ensuring the process of succession strengthens and celebrates our democracy? Can we move beyond the finger-pointing blame game and try to develop more complex and nuanced understandings of the problems South Africa faces?
The media groups themselves should be investing in better journalism. Those newspaper companies that fail to invest more in their products, their printing presses and their journalists in the next 10 years will die. Rapidly changing technology is changing the way we work, the audience we work for and our relationship with them.
Because of its size, resources and public service obligations, our public broadcaster should be setting the standards for good, in-depth journalism, but it is failing to do so. The SABC has failed to stem the damage done by the extremely damaging independent report into last year’s ”blacklisting” affair. It seems content to let things ride, to let good people leave out of frustration and to allow the triumph of a complacent mediocrity. The problem is likely to continue as long as the board is chosen by a parliamentary committee dominated by the ANC. The board should be made up of those best able and equipped to oversee and nurture the makers of great radio and television, not representatives of competing special interests loaded towards the ruling party.
This is a good time to take the issue up, not just because there is strong public sentiment around the issue, but because those in power are coming to the end of their term.
Last year, we faced the first substantial attempt by our government to introduce pre-publication censorship of our news media in the form of proposed amendments to the Film and Publications Act. This threat has only briefly receded, and it is something we will have to face in the coming year. This is a grave pity, because we are living in a period when we should be able to assume our media freedom and be able to expand the debate into areas such as the need to match our freedom with equality — the right of all to have access to the media.
The media will contribute to the kind of society we want, and the kind envisaged in our Constitution, not by writing good news stories, but by the quality of debate and discussion, the level to which our media empower our people to make informed decisions about their life and their country. This can only come from a journalism that digs and probes and questions.
A successful society is one which can face up to and correct its inevitable errors; that doesn’t believe there is one way forward, but a number of options which have to be debated and analysed; one which accepts that there are many notions of responsibility, many views of the truth, and many ways to use and abuse facts that are neither immutable nor unchanging. Good journalism is often trouble-making journalism, and that means that some — usually those with power and wealth — will consider it irresponsible.
Anton Harber is Caxton professor of journalism and media studies at Wits University. This is an edited version of his keynote address to the Goedgedacht Forum’s February 22 to 23 dialogue in Cape Town