The Sowetan Newspaper Press Freedom Day Seminar on October 19 brought together a wide range of top media people and politicians in South Africa to discuss a number of issues pertaining to the media. One of the features of the day was a panel discussion of how to broaden ownership of the media.
The Press Freedom Day Seminar seemed set for a day of media fireworks particularly since it came at a time of intense debate about the media's role and conduct in the New South Africa. This debate - often acrimonious - was fuelled by the resignation in September of City Press Editor Kulu Sibiya from the predominantly white Conference of Editors, the sale of East London's Daily Dispatch to Times Media Limited and the African National Congress's (ANC) attack on the way the media was reporting on the current changes in South Africa. What could have then easily been the highlight of the day was the panel discussion on how to broaden ownership of the media. The panel was made up of all the big-wig editors based in Gauteng - Khulu Sibiya of the City Press, Anton Harber from the Mail and Guardian, Shaun Johnson from the Sunday Independent, Thami Mazwai of Black Enterprise Magazine, Joe Thloloe of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, Peter Sullivan of the Star and Tim du Plessis of the Beeld (Aggrey Kl aaste from the Sowetan apologised for not being able to make it). So there they sat, the elite few from some of the most powerful newspapers in the country, and all they could offer was a lot of wishy-washy talk about what the established media could do to re-evaluate its role in the current situation in our country and how they could possibly correct imbalances of the past.
The debate that the panel was dealing with was a very sensitive one and one that had been afforded a lot of media exposure over the past few weeks. It started in a blaze of glory with Thabo Mbeki's speech at the Black Editor's Forum. In a scathing attack on the current role of the media in South Africa, Mbeki spoke about the "predominantly white-owned, white-edited and largely white-written newspapers and magazines of South Africa". A few weeks later, Khulu Sibiya threw down the gauntlet and unleashed another storm when he resigned as head of the Conference of Editors saying that his efforts to unite black and white editors had failed and that growing disillusionment with the body had dictated his departure.
Taking their cue from this, the ANC ushered in a political dimension to the debate in a series of press releases attacking the media. In the first news release, ANC spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said white-owned monopolies portrayed the complex processes of political and social transformation of South African society in a superficial and one-dimensional manner: "This lead to a significant distortion in the free flow of information to the people of south Africa, particularly around the Reconstruction and Development Programme and the entire transformation process."
Gauteng Premier Tokyo Sexwale entered the ring next when he blasted foreign ownership of the media in South Africa, making specific reference to Independent Newspapers which is controlled by Irish businessman Tony O'Reilly. Sexwale said he believed the mass media institutions were lagging behind other sectors in transforming themselves to suit the new South African environment. It was in the context of this debate that the panel of editors took up their seats.
Anton Harber of the Mail and Guardian raised the first point of note when he lamented that while a number of new magazine and newspaper titles were being launched or re-launched, nobody was making an effort to win new readers: "Increasingly, we are competing for the same small bunch of more-educated, literate, wealthy readers. Nobody is going out to attract the semi-literate or those not being targeted already by other newspapers" he said.
While not providing suggestions on how this problem could be solved, Harber raised what was probably the crux of the issue - the media in this country was merely rearranging its formulas while not fundamentally changing at a time when greater input from all the people in the country was being desired and the lack of representivity in the media of the majority of people was being highlighted.
Khulu Sibiya was the first to put forward a concrete proposal when he suggested that it was about time black people came together to form their own media consortiums. However, while such a suggestion may be a good short term option - in the sense that it could pave the way for healthy competition with white-dominated media groups and open the door of opportunity even further for prospective black journalists - but in the long term, replacing one set of media consortiums with another set will hardly solve the problem of media monopolies.
None of the other editors put forward any pro posals on how to actually broaden media ownership in South Africa and for a while it seemed as if there was a sinister agreement between them all to speak the subject dead and not raise any more of the controversies that had been raging in the newspapers the preceding weeks. However, this seemed less likely when it became clear that they were in fact in no position to try and address the problem. It was Shaun Johnson of the Independent who pointed out the inadequacies of the panel by noting that there were no newspaper owners in their midst: an important omission and one that rendered the panel quite helpless in its attempt to address the issue at stake. The organisers of the seminar were not questioned on why there was this vital omission, because they should rightfully have been wrapped over the knuckles for organising a panel discussion on a subject which the panellists were in no position to answer.
The question of media ownership and broadening it is a question of finances and market considerations, because the print media in South Africa - as in virtually every country in the world that is ruled by market economies - is a business. This means that the questions concerning the broadening of ownership is not a question of what the editorial desk of a newspaper thinks is desirable, but what is possible for a marketplace to sustain. This does not mean that the broadening of media ownership in the print industry is not possibly. Not only is it possible, but imperative to ensure diversity in this country.