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FXI's Executive Director, Jane Duncan, today spoke at a colloquim on the ANC's media policy, hosted by the Department of Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand. These are her speaking notes.
General points on the ANC’s media policy The ANC’s media policy process raises some critically important issues for media freedom in South Africa, but also sounds some alarm bells. While media attention has focused on the alarm bells – especially the implications for media freedom of the proposed media tribunal to investigate the adequacy of the media self-regulatory system, and other ‘remedial measures’ for those who feel that their rights are violated. What we need to do is understand and appraise the media policy process as a whole. Progressive aspects of the ANC and government's media policy that bring meaningful reforms must be supported and those that do not must be rejected. Making such assessments requires critical distance, not blind allegiance. This will allow us to situate the points that are made within a framework, understand what drives them, amplify the strong points, while addressing the weaknesses. The relevance of political economy critiques To an extent, the ANC’s media policy is embedded in a theoretical perspective called critical political economy of the media. Critical political economy arguments consider how the corporate ownership of media production and distribution, and especially the corporatisation of social discourse, affects society, and is strongly linked to political economy critiques by writers such as Robert Machesney, Walden Bello, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. Critical political economy considers how the monopolistic control over the media is leading to a situation where the commercial media pursue biases towards a dominant elite, and examines the various, complex ways in which these biases are constructed. In the words of Chomsky and Herman ‘it traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalise dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their message across to the public [through a series of news filter]’. In South Africa, the argument about media commercialisation, and its impact on the public interest role of the media, have been pursued by key figures such as Thabo Mbeki, Pallo Jordan, and Joel Netshitenzhe, and has been a recurring thread in ANC media policy. In the ANC’s 2002 discussion document, entitled 'Media in a Democratic South Africa', the authors noted that the global phenomenon of an expanding media without diversity was evident in the South African media as well. The commercialisation of media was reinforcing the historic disparities in the media inherited from apartheid to create a potent mix of exclusion. These debates link the increasing concentration and conglomeration of media to threats to the integrity of the media. Concentration, it is argued, has fostered a media that is characterised by the homogenisation of views, commodification of news and views, the dumbing down of analysis the tailoring of facts to suit its own world view: hardly a media that can claim to represent the public interest. However, the twist in the ANC’s take on critical political economy is that the commercial media are often biased against the government, not towards it, because the government is politically progressive, not conservative. The commercial media, by contrast, propagate and overwhelmingly neo-liberal view. Critical political economy recognizes media concentration as a key freedom of expression issue. It is a fact that the commercial media sell news to make money, and that the race for greater profits may well corrupt news values. It is also a fact that heightened commercialisation and consolidation of media is fuelling this problem. Political economy critiques are enjoying renewed relevance since 9/11, as joint ownership of titles has been used as a means of asserting direct control over editorial content by proprietors inspired by patriotic fervour. In the leadup to the invasion of Iraq, for instance, Rupert Murdock reportedly instructed all his titles to support the invasion. Critical political economy has its strengths and weaknesses as a theory. Its strengths are that it refutes the simplistic notion that the commercial media are neutral spokespeople for free speech and the public interest. It analyses the complex ways in which the commercial media participate in the construction of an elite consensus. However, critical political economy has also been attacked, and rightly so, for being deterministic, and for denying agency in that journalistic outcomes are not always determined by who their owners or managers are: the relationship is not simply that of a puppet to a string, as there is a great deal of slippage in newsmaking. The sheer complexity of the newsmaking process should not be simplified, which may still enjoy a relative autonomy from politically or commercially inspired owners or managers. Journalistic outcomes also depend on the extent of editorial independence in a particular newsroom, which may differ from company to company. While there is a general trend towards the breaking down of walls between editorial and management, management and ownership, editorial and advertising, the extent to which this trend manifests may also differ from newsroom to newsroom. Attention to detail is important in these arguments, and sweeping generalisations about the commercial media do not bring any conceptual clarity to the situation. These observations are relevant to the debate about the role of the SABC in several ways. To start with a less important point, the SABC’s recent criticism of the interests driving the commercial media, especially the print media, in criticising the SABC betray a simplistic appropriation of political economy arguments. The commercial nature of the print media does not, in and of itself, nullify their claims to represent the public interest: it complicates these claims, but does not automatically nullify them. The ANC’s use of political economy arguments should not be seized on by public figures for the wrong reasons. We must guard against opportunistic appropriation of political economy arguments, to shield public institutions such as the SABC from criticism. The way to do this is – not to disparage political economy arguments – but to take them seriously, understand them better, and more specifically to understand if and how they apply or don’t apply to the South African media. A publicly funded media model: possibilities and limits Now to move onto a more important point. There seem to have been significant retreats in the ANC’s media policy regarding how to respond to the problem of commercialisation. The 2002 document argued that the ANC should respond by establishing a publicly funded media model. This model is necessary 'in order for the public and community media to serve as vehicles to articulate the needs of the poor, rural people, women, labour and other marginalised constituencies'. Furthermore, this model '..should accept the limitations of the advertising and commercially driven media', implying that the commercial media should be left to flourish largely untouched, although they should be targetted for black empowerment interventions. However, at that stage, the view was that the limitations of commercial media should be accepted, and the government should rather focus its attention on building a parallel, but publicly funded and non-commercial, media system. To this end, the ANC resolved that the government must move towards establishing a public funded model for the SABC, characterised by cross-subsidisation. Public funding was necessary in order to reduce the SABC's reliance on adspend, and to ensure proper delivery on its language mandate. The ANC set itself particular objectives, including the realisation of a publicly funded model by the year 2012. Within three years, the SABC must have close captioning and subtitling for the deaf, the Parliamentary channel must be established within two years, and within five years the SABC must ensure that its programming should be mainly local content and sensitive to gender, culture and the well-being of children. Also, in the next budget, funds should be allocated to establish regional television stations in line with the Medium Term Expenditure Framework. There can be no doubt that the establishment of this publicly funded model must be supported as an advance for media freedom. For the SABC, it will mean that South Africa is prepared to roll public broadcasting forward in a global climate where public broadcasting is being rolled backwards. This in itself is something to celebrate; in spite of all the controversies around editorial integrity of the SABC, or the lack of it we must keep our eye on the ball and not allow these controversies to nullify the need for public funding. We must bear in mind that an overwhelming number of South Africans rely on SABC services for their news, information and entertainment, and may not have the luxury of migrating away from SABC services if they are unhappy with them. However, what is troubling is that the need for this model, as set out in the 2002 document, is not reaffirmed in the 2007 documents, although there are references to elements of this model (such as the need for public funding for the SABC). The ANC needs to explain why this is so. The report from the policy conference makes reference to concerns about the slow pace of implementation of the Stellenbosch resolutions, yet there is no reference to why this is the case. Why is it that, five years down the line, treasury has still not come to the party, affecting the establishment of SABC 4 and 5. However, there are also conceptual flaws in this model. In the process of leaving the fundamental media structures intact, the ANC risks creating islands of public service progamming in a sea of commercialisation. The islands will probably become submerged by the sea, as commercial services tend to crowd out public services in a mixed funding situation, for a variety of reasons. It is for good reason that public services researcher David McDonald has noted that public subsidies are not necessarily incompatible with neo-liberalism: on the contrary. As with other public services, media may receive a grossly insufficient public service top up, with commercial services then kicking in as the main fare. So is the publicly funded media system an alternative to what the ANC considers to be a neo-liberal commercial media system, or is it an adaptation to this system? I suspect it is the latter. For instance, it is a deep concern for us that the print media are dominated by essentially three groups, namely Johncom/ Caxton, Naspers/ Media 24 and Independent Newspapers, and conglomeration is also increasing. In many, unacknowledged ways, the government is responsible for media concentration, in spite of many in the ANC being highly critical of its effects. Concentration is having complex and multiple effects on media content. Without wanting to caricature the complexity of the situation, concentration and conglomeration involves greatly expanded multimedia options for what one could call the ‘first economy’, but with very little practical benefits for what one could call the ‘second economy’. In reality, these are one economy with two enclaves; media opportunities for the first economy are expanding because media opportunities are contracting for the second economy, and media policy solutions need to treat the media system as a single entity. There are several ways of dealing with the problem of media commercialisation, which do not seem to be part of the debate, such as media-specific anti-concentration measures rather than relying on the blunt instrument of competition rules. Anti-concentration measures are not incompatible with media freedom: on the contrary, they may well be necessary to secure media freedom. The ANC’s media policy is silent on this issue. The ANC needs to consider whether it wants to tinker with the system, or to change it. Attempt to exercise greater state control over content - as an answer to concerns about the nature of media content – may seem to be a tempting quick fix solution, but it is not the answer. Editorial integrity and the SABC Board The SABC has argued that it has a duty to serve those audiences that remain underserved by commercial media. This is a correct position. In some other countries, and in spite of their universality mandates, public broadcasters are tasked with prioritising marginalised communities, which are often minority groups. In South Africa, those who are often marginalised in public discourse as reflected in the media are in the majority. So the SABC’s pro-poor bias, while maintaining its universality mandate, is a correct bias. More controversial, though, is the SABC’s assumption that this bias implies an editorial approach which it terms ‘development journalism’, which can and indeed has translated into biased and distorted content on SABC services. At this point we run into a conceptual dilemma: how can we have a bias without bias? What must be acknowledged by the SABC is that, in South Africa (and in fact globally), the development model itself is contested. The contests around economic policy, service delivery and the like that take place on the streets of South Africa on a daily basis point to this fact. While the ANC may have chosen a particular development path – one that is hotly contested within the alliance and beyond – this does not mean to say that the SABC must choose as well. Rather, it must allow a thousand schools of thought to contend on what South Africa’s development model should look like. That is how the SABC achieves an unbiased bias, and I am not convinced that the SABC recognises this. For instance, it is not for the SABC to decide to take sides on whether pre-paid meters are an appropriate instrument for water delivery, as it did in one story on the Operation G’cinamanzi project in Soweto: the BCCSA found it guilty of distortion and bias in this case. As a cost-recovery and water conservation tool, pre-paid meters are vigorously opposed in many communities where they are rolled out. The Constitutional Court is now being called on to pronounce on the adequacy of the current free basic water supply of 6000 free litres, as well as on the constitutionality of pre-paid metering. I am not attempting to accuse all SABC news broadcasts of bias and distortion on the basis of one story – this would be simplistic - but I do use this example as an illustration of the dangers of a single-minded approach to development journalism. The last points that I want to make are about the SABC Board. We are made to understand that development journalism is official policy of the SABC Board. If the Board is to ensure a diversity of voices on the development agenda are to be heard, then it itself must be a reflection of these diversity of voices. While one accepts that certain skills and qualifications are needed to sit on the Board, it seems like this requirement in the Broadcasting Act is being read too narrowly, and in the process is leading to a corporatisation of Board appointments. It also seems like the requirement to ensure a representation of a broad cross-section of the population is being read too narrowly, to refer to race and gender only. In the current list of prospective Board appointees that has gone through to the Minister, there is a preponderance of business voices. There is no labour voice on the Board, no-one from civil society, no genuine voices of the poor or the unemployed. It is a ‘first economy’ Board. We need to ask ourselves whether this is appropriate for a broadcaster that claims to represent the interests of the ‘second economy’. If we do not have a governance structure that genuinely represents South Africa, then it is doubtful whether we will be able to strike the balance between independence and accountability that is necessary to ensure the editorial integrity of the public broadcaster. For the sake of genuine public broadcasting, the appointment process needs to be based on the principle of ‘nothing about us, without us’. One person has commented on this article. 1. FIX THE FXI
BLACKLISTED DICTATOR, Unregistered Jane,
Whilst "Mbekoteri" believes that The SABC should be renamed The ANCB, there is no chance that there will be a diversity of voices.
Your analysis fails to address the central problem which is that govt
should not use the public broadcaster for party political purposes.
It is a great pity that as executive director of The FXI, you do not address this central issue.
Jane.. for the record "Are you an ANC supporter?" As exec director of The FXI it is about time that you revealed your political allegiances.
After all, Na'eem Jeenah (director of The FXI) has made it crystal clear that he is an "Islamic activist".
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