There’s good cause for why Rapport editor Tim du Plessis is getting flak for firing Deon Maas — a columnist whose call to tolerate satanism outraged some readers.
The paper has about 300 000 buyers, but Du Plessis’s excessive reaction was in response to a number of boycott threats and, according to his paper, 450 duplicated letters of protest and 629 SMSs.
Melodramatically calling the pressure a ”perfect storm” that forced him to look down an ”abyss”, Du Plessis decided simply to ditch Maas and proceed henceforth with what he termed ”new wisdom”.
Various commentators, including Maas himself, are now accusing Du Plessis of being a ”sissie” and ”lacking balls”. If anything should prompt a boycott of Rapport, wrote one critical blogger, it’s the capitulation to verkramptes.
Much of the critique relates to the editor’s explanation of his action. Du Plessis proclaimed that when protesters campaigned to boycott the paper, it changed the issue from one of free speech to one of commercial interest. Maas had to pay the price.
Ironically, the paper also stands accused of having engaged Maas for commercial reasons in the first place — as a way to boost circulation through controversy, rather than to promote freedom of speech.
Du Plessis’s elaborated rationale is that his paper only exercises its freedom in the space permitted by his market, and he disingenuously likens his decision to other editors deciding against publishing the infamous Muhammad cartoons.
Worse, in Sunday’s paper, he justified the firing as not only a way to survive his ”storm”, but also to maintain integrity and to promote tolerance and open debate.
For these reasons, it’s easy to see why Du Plessis earned condemnation. His response is that critics are not in the proverbial hot seat and having to calculate if the particular dispute is worth the candle.
What this editor has not perceived, however, is that there are much more creative responses to the boycotters than dropping Maas.
Significantly, Du Plessis hasn’t shown his face in the South African National Editors’ Forum for a few years. Perhaps if he had, there might have been peers to turn to — people whose wiser brains he could have picked about ways to deal with his pickle.
Beyond this particular sacrifice of principle and pen-pusher, the saga demonstrates the fragile nature of ”editorial independence” as the right of editors to decide what goes into their newspapers.
Contemporary South African journalism survives only if it serves a market that can pay enough, or which attracts advertising. No matter how worthy the content, or the quality of its construction, if there’s no revenue basis, it won’t endure.
Yet, even with this capitalist context, journalism generally has to keep its credibility capital aloof from immediate business concerns — a status that is, in fact, in the long-term economic interests of any given media enterprise.
After Maas’s firing, can Rapport henceforth be counted on to resist kowtowing to advertisers’ objections to specific editorial content?
The case also highlights a deeper issue: how much journalism depends on the passivity of audiences to swallow whatever gets dished up on their plates.
Normally, audiences have a high tolerance threshold for dull or distasteful content. Not so in this instance where a vociferous fraction of readers — instead of letting their subscriptions lapse — proactively mobilised against the paper.
On the one hand, that shows a powerful sense of ”ownership” that must hearten any fan of newspapers. On the other hand, it also represents a direct attack on the autonomy of the paper.
Most worryingly, it forces open the door to audience-driven journalism — a model that dare not report anything that might provoke or offend consumers.
To adapt a metaphor, if the people don’t like the look of potholes in the road, you let them keep on focused on the sky. That’s not journalism.
Will Rapport now accede to verkrampte readers who don’t want stories about black people?
The challenge for Du Plessis is to find ways to talk about discomforting issues and ideas (and satanism is barely a serious contender here). In addition, he needs to have the nous to deal with hostile reaction by stepping up debate, rather than running away from it.
Right now, Rapport‘s editor has surrendered his journalistic rights and duties to survive a particular battle. If it’s a precedent, then he might as well forfeit the wider war for maintaining the autonomy of journalism. The loudmouths will win, and the public will be the losers.