Shortly before this past weekend’s world summit on children’s media in Johannesburg, the African National Congress (ANC) released a policy discussion document on media. This coincidence turned out to be a contrast — high hopes from the summit; a real let-down by the ruling party.
If young South Africans are to benefit from media in years to come, it will be thanks to the summit, and not from the decidedly lame thinking of the ANC.
Revealing an anachronistic view of the media as a tool to be manipulated, the ANC discussion document raises the following question: ”What role should the media play in the deepening of democracy and the advancement of fundamental social transformation?”
The engineering undertone in this wording was recently pre-figured in a speech by Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad. He argued at a conference that freedom of the press did not mean a right to disinform — but, significantly, he left unstated who he thinks should make the media accountable for being irresponsible.
In similar vein, with the media supposed to ”play a role” àla the ANC document, there is also a symptomatic silence on who ought to arrange such behaviour.
The answer about where the agency for intervention lies is buried within another question posed by the document: ”What does the democratic movement need to do to ensure that within a free and diverse media the progressive political and ideological perspectives supported by the majority of South Africans achieve prominence?”
Little wonder that, in the face of contemporary control-oriented views like this, media people will continue to cherish their very unaccountability. Most believe they constitute a marketplace of ideas, i.e. the essence of democracy — and that nobody is forced to consume particular media products, especially when there are alternatives to choose from.
There is cause for concern that the governing political party seems to be worrying about how to put an end to media ”disinformation”, and also still seeking to harness the media to how Pretoria interprets the national project.
It wouldn’t be quite so bad if the ANC were simultaneously proposing ideas to encourage more outlets and a more diversified media. But the party is wholly inadequate in this respect:
- Its document refers to the R7-million given by the government to the Media Development and Diversity Agency in 2005/6, without as much as a hint as to how embarrassingly pathetic is this gesture.
- The document is even weaker when it comes to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). There is no reference to the controversy around blacklisting. And there is also nothing on previous ANC policy about public funding for SABC — a policy that has been mainly been ignored by the ANC government to date.
- Completely absent are any new proposals — whether carrots or sticks — to expand and diversify print media ownership.
- Despite praising the prospects of cellphones as mass media, there is not a peep in the document about the place of government policy in cutting the costs of telecoms and internet.
Another area for concern is silence about the ongoing dispute over the government’s proposed change to the Film and Publications Act that would bring news media into pre-publication censorship. This misguided initiative, which commenced last year, was justified at the time as a step to combat child pornography.
In contrast, the weekend’s children media summit didn’t waste time by erroneously implicating journalism in these kinds of abuses. It concentrated instead on promoting broadcasting policies that would provide more child-friendly and child-inclusive content.
The difference highlights how the ANC’s document ignores not only the censorship row, but the country’s youth entirely.
What the document does do is to stick the knife into journalists by reminding readers of the ”generally corrupt relationship” phrase that was incorrectly recycled across the media.
On the other hand, there is no recognition whatsoever of the invaluable service rendered by investigative journalism in recent years. Instead, the document claims that phrases like ”funding scandal” and ”controversial minister” are used ”without a moment’s thought about their veracity or the value judgements that may inform them”.
In other words, for the ruling party, it is not reality that should change, but rather the way the media describes Oilgate and Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. This from a supposedly serious policy discussion document, and from a party with a proud history of promoting media freedom and pluralism.
The point is that a political movement that brought South Africa democracy should, in the year 2007, be thinking beyond ideas past sell-by date and be coming up with something other than sterility. No such luck.
Instead of producing a sense of promise, the effect is disappointment and a degree of apprehension. In short, the document amounts to a short-changing upcoming generations. At least we’ve had the children’s media summit to help keep some hope alive.