A situation out of sync could be remedied this week with the formal launch of the Press Council on Friday. The new body is intended to beef up the role of the press ombudsman — a one-person operation that has dealt with public complaints about newspapers over the past 10 years.
It’s a welcome move, because the press has been lagging way behind broadcasting in regard to this form of self-regulation.
The irony is that although newspapers tend to rock boats and ruffle feathers much more than radio and TV, the broadcast industry has led the way in dealing with public complaints.
The Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) has received close on 10 000 complaints, and adjudicated more than 1 000 of these, in its 14-year history. In about 10% of cases, it has found against its media members — even fining them on occasion.
For its part, the Office of the Press Ombudsman, in the person of former editor Ed Linnington, has done some good work over the years. Examples include mediating complaints against papers by the government or private people, and finding mutually acceptable solutions in most cases.
Linnington has also condemned excesses, such as criticising the Daily Voice for ”overstepping the bounds of decency” in the way it exploited photographs of the naked buttocks of murdered victims Brett Goldin and Richard Bloom in 2006.
But in contrast to the BCCSA, the press ombudsman has had far fewer complaints — for instance, less than 500 between 2003 and 2006. This partly reflects broadcast’s greater audience than print, but it is also, definitely, a function of the low profile of the ombudsman.
While broadcasters repeatedly advise their audiences how to file complaints with the BCCSA, newspapers barely even cover the cases that come before the ombudsman. Aggrieved audiences in print would not easily know where they can seek redress.
The system to date has continued unamended, notwithstanding abuses like journalists playing politics around the Jacob Zuma succession bid (remember the Bulelani Ngcuka spy coverage?) and the mass mistake about Judge Hilary Squires declaring a ”generally corrupt relationship”.
Only last year, when the government and African National Congress parliamentarians tried to bring the press under the control of the Film and Publications Board — under the pretext of battling child pornography — did the print industry stir into action.
Not that newspapers had been purveyors of kiddie smut, but they had no wish to lose their historic exemption from the purview of this government-appointed control board.
That status of exemption in turn dates from the apartheid era when the newspaper industry successfully fended off government control by agreeing to set up the original Press Council (later Media Council).
Historically, this was a response to Pretoria’s pressure to ”get your house in order before we do”. Papers like the Rand Daily Mail were accordingly reprimanded by the council, after being hauled up after official complaints over (true) coverage of the murder of Steve Biko.
But though the 2007 Press Council also comes into being following political pressure, it’s not a reincarnation of the old one.
For a start, it retains the Office of the Press Ombudsman, which was created in 1996 to replace the previously discredited system. The change also takes place in a context where rights to free expression and freedom of the media are entrenched in the Constitution.
What’s most important is that the revamp may have been triggered by the government, but its real engine is industry concern about the extent of biased, sloppy and inaccurate reporting and the need to raise print journalism standards.
In this light, the new Press Council will update the (voluntary) code of conduct under which newspapers operate (and against which standards they are judged). It also will take a more proactive role in promoting media ethics, doing public liaison and representing newspapers to the government.
But if the body is to play its role to the fullest, it should immediately upgrade the embarrassment that is the ombudsman’s website, which is way behind that of the BCCSA facility. It should also:
- Revise its composition of five members of the public and six from the press. While self-regulation may justify a majority of press people, it also weakens the independence of a body that not only needs to be credible and fair, but must be seen as such as well;
- Scrap the existing requirement whereby complainants have to agree to forfeit rights to initiate civil law suits against a newspaper if they accept the jurisdiction of the ombudsman;
- Revisit the available sanctions — and add an option of fining extreme violators in order to compel journalists to take the whole institution more seriously. An order only to apologise or print a complainant’s reply is too flaccid for cases like the Ngcuka spy story.
- Require member newspapers to give prominent and regular coverage to the actions of the ombudsman, and publicise the same on the back of every journalist’s business card.
What also needs work is elaborating the jurisprudence around complaints. Past judgements include decidedly flimsy statements like ”as a fact the South African public is becoming increasingly tolerant of irreverence and profanity”, and ”the broad sweep of the public would not hold this view”. Less contentious and more constitutionally based rationales are needed if judgements are to be persuasive.
If the new Press Council wants to be taken seriously by public, politicians and the press alike, it cannot continue with business as usual. After Friday’s launch fanfare, the work needs to begin.