African song and dance welcomed delegates on Monday to the 60th World Newspaper Congress and 14th World Editors Forum in Cape Town ‒ the first time the events have graced Africa, as keynote speaker President Thabo Mbeki pointed out to journalists, editors and media practitioners gathered from 109 countries.
South Africa will always weigh actions proposed to contain freedom of expression against the guarantees in its Constitution, Mbeki said at the opening ceremony at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, but warned that it is incumbent on the media to be introspective and enhance standards of public morality and good behaviour. ”Surely the media also carry the basic responsibilities of good citizenship,” he said.
Earlier, World Association of Newspapers president Gavin O’Reilly had emphasised how freedom of expression continued to be violated across Africa.
”We pay homage to members of the press in Africa who have the courage to bring out their publications often under very difficult conditions,” he said, using as an example the continued implementation of ”insult laws” in many African countries.
O’Reilly also raised concern over South African media’s eight-month struggle to have the controversial Film and Publications Amendment Bill adjusted in order to prevent censorship of newspapers and other media. He also dwelled on ”the tragedy that is Zimbabwe today”, asking Mbeki to ”do all in your power to rectify the flagrant abuses in that country”.
In his address, Trevor Ncube, Zimbabwean publisher and president of the Newspaper Association of South Africa, said: ”The thinking of too many [African] governments is that the media are a tool … to be in such shoes and try to make a difference is a big challenge. Fortunately, there are those who survive.”
However, ”These are exciting and interesting times for our industry,” said O’Reilly, and the media industry is far from dying.
Mbeki said a well-run state needs both a responsible government and media, and that the media should hone their skills by improving training, producing more specialist and in-depth writing, and retaining skilled practitioners.
Regarding media freedom on the African continent, Mbeki noted the efforts under way by the African Union and the African Editors’ Forum to declare a year of African media freedom. A debate between five presidents and five editors is due in Accra, Ghana, in a month’s time.
”This kind of dialogue is new and holds the hope for breaking new grounds in extending freedoms and understanding between political leaders and leaders of our media community,” he said, calling for accurate coverage of Africa by the world’s media despite limited resources available to many media companies. ”Come and see as much as you can!”
The president also expressed his concern about the insecurity of journalists in other parts of the world, where reporters have been kidnapped, killed or otherwise threatened.
During the opening ceremony, the Golden Pen of Freedom was awarded to Shi Tao, editor of the Dongdai Shang Tao in China, for his defiant writing on the facts of the Tiananmen Square uprising — still a ”state secret” in China — that brought him a 10-year jail sentence. The award was accepted by his mother, who delivered an emotional acceptance speech in Chinese.
Digital media
Looking to the emergence of digital media, a central topic of discussion at the conference, Mbeki said change is necessary in an age of blogging and Google, but the media must not lose track of the need to be fair and balanced.
The subject of the media in the digital age dominated much of the rest of the day’s discussion at both the World Newspaper Congress and the World Editors Forum.
Despite media analysts predicting ”doom and gloom” for newspapers in the face of digital challenges, said CEO of WAN Timothy Balding, it’s not a dead-wood industry. Globally, newspapers’ advertising revenue is on the rise, as are overall circulation figures. More new titles have been registered in the past 18 months than ever before, he said. ”Newspapers are back on investment horizons.”
Every day, 515-million copies of newspapers are sold worldwide, read by 1,6-billion people. If free newspapers are added, the figure rises to 556-million. South Africa has seen an overall circulation increase of 8,24% in the past year — and 43,18% over the past five years.
Luis Fernando Santos, president of Casa Editorial El Tiempo in Colombia, explained how his sizeable media house has forged ahead in the digital age. Its products have multimedia spin-offs (a magazine feeds into a TV show, website and newspaper supplement, all owned by his company), and its newsroom has been revolutionalised by converging journalists into a single unit divided by subject, which feeds into a central database supplying all the company’s products.
At a panel discussion on editorial quality in the digital age, Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee said print journalists cannot be forced to make the transition to new media, and such convergence should rather be done through ”a process of osmosis” — using new-media journalists without trying to move everyone at once.
She also stressed that podcasters are not broadcasters and bloggers are not journalists. Quality and skill still count. ”Is there too much talk about the tools of journalism and not about journalism itself?” she asked.
Even in a country where 11% of people read blogs daily, said Peter Hjörne, op-ed editor-in-chief of Swedish newspaper Göteborgs Posten, there is still room for journalists. The essence of the matter is quality, which can be provided by professional journalists kept on their toes by interaction with readers.
The digital revolution is happening now, he said, and newspapers have to embrace issues such as 24-hour news coverage and the ability to publish immediately. ”No more three- and five-year plans,” he said. ”The media world is moving too fast.”
Conversely, Turkish editor-in-chief Ergun Babahan, of Sabah, said internet penetration is low in his country and no real threat to newspapers thus far — yet Turkish media companies are investing in the internet and creating websites with an eye on the future.
Such investment has led to a new daily in South Africa, the Times, seeing the light of day on Tuesday, explained Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya. The new newspaper will be distributed to Sunday Times subscribers and will be fully interactive ”from day one”, incorporating blogging, podcasts, a mobile presence and the likes.
However, Makhanya said the problem of lack of depth in digital journalism remains.
”It often does not enhance the knowledge of the recipient,” he said. ”People trust us [newspapers], and that trust has developed over hundreds of years. It will take a long time before digital media have that level of intrinsic trust.”