One of the most obvious ironies about the meeting of the Forum of Black Journalists (FBJ) was that three of the four people on the podium with Jacob Zuma were not journalists.
To exclude white journalists because they do not share the pain and frustration experienced by their black colleagues seems disingenuous as a raison d’être for the FBJ if those leading the line make a living as soapie makers, event managers, business people or government spokespeople.
Surely the chances of my white colleague feeling my pain is greater than someone whose relationship with the newsroom was forged in the days when cigarette-smoking drunks used to abuse their underlings and get away with it.
The FBJ cannot pretend it is brought together solely by concerns about what happens in the newsroom. It must be much more than that.
Perhaps it is the affirmation of blackness in a world that continues to question whether black journalists appreciate their positions of influence in the arena of contested ideas.
Black journalists in a post-apartheid society have new dilemmas. We are expected to be black first and journalists second, while everyone else can get away with being whatever profession they are without pondering which comes first.
More often than not, black hacks have to account for sitting back when the beneficiaries of white racism behave as if it is business as usual.
It is a matter of public record that many black commentators and policymakers have no faith in black journalists. We are seen, wrongly or not, as simply parroting what is routinely called the ”white/DA” agenda — whatever that means!
It is not long ago that Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad threatened to pull advertising from the black-owned and -managed Sunday Times because the paper was not showing the kind of respect for national leaders that is expected of black journalists in mainstream newspapers.
The black Sunday Times owners never came to the defence of their black editor when he was under attack from a black government official for failing to behave as was expected of a black editor.
On the other side of the spectrum, many of us have to live with residual doubt over our abilities. It is nothing new and neither is it confined to confirmed racists.
In The Dream Deferred, Mark Gevisser says Thabo Mbeki reportedly told a comrade that ”in the mind of a black person, even with comrades, there is a notion that this white person thinks I cannot do the job. And in the mind of the black person then is the notion that I’m going to show the white person I can do the job.”
It has become a default position for those who are not black to see the black perspective being deformed by a chip on the shoulder, by living in the past or by naivety about how the international world operates, instead of dealing with the perception of race supremacy.
Added to these intimidatory tactics is the tendency to want to strawman the debate and ignore the fundamentals of the issues raised. It might work for a while but, sooner rather than later, the intimidated gather enough guts and talk back.
Speaking of talkbacks, Jo’burg’s Talk Radio 702 comes across as disingenuous when complaining about the FBJ gathering.
If it was so perturbed about the possibility of missing out on a news event, why not send a black African reporter to the gathering? Could it be that it doesn’t have one senior enough to be trusted with such a story? And therein lie some of the reasons for the FBJ’s existence — whether black journalists play any meaningful role in their newsrooms other than helping tick off the employment-equity boxes.
How is it possible that in a political country like South Africa, a station of 702’s standing doesn’t have a senior black hack (radio show hosts excluded) able to cover a political event that it dares not miss?
I don’t know why there was not a single black African among those who dramatically walked out of Friday’s meeting or hung around outside. Surely the station’s right to send whomever it chooses to cover a story cannot be more important than getting the story covered?
So let us not kid ourselves. It is patently untrue that black people are incapable of being racist. The poverty of thought displayed on the banners of the relaunched FBJ showed that blacks are not instinctively sensitive to the pain of racial exclusion.
But similarly the owners of media houses cannot, solely on the basis of the blackness of those who manage newsrooms, assume that black journalists have no issues that pertain to them as blacks.
Condemnations can fly. The question is: Can those editors in the South African National Editors’ Forum return to their newsrooms, face their black colleagues and say the reasons for the existence of the FBJ are absent in their workplaces?
And 702’s righteous anger might find vindication when the Human Rights Commission makes its ruling, but both bodies would need to convince their black colleagues that the reasons the FBJ justifies its existence do not apply to their newsrooms. And I don’t mean not having black journalists in your staff.