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143 pages

English

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The essays in this timely book analyses the crisis and chaos of journalism in contemporary South Africa and argues for and about the power of public interest journalism
This timely collection of essays analyses the crisis of journalism in contemporary South Africa at a period when the media and their role are frequently at the centre of public debate. The transition to digital news has been messy, random and unpredictable. The spread of news via social media platforms has given rise to political propaganda and fake news. Yet media companies oust experienced journalists in favour of 'content producers'.

Against this backdrop, Daniels points out the contribution of investigative journalists to exposing corruption and sees new opportunities to forge a model for the future of non-profit, public-funded journalism. She argues for the power of public interest journalism and the reflection of a diversity of voices and positions in the news. The book addresses the gains and losses from decolonial and feminist perspectives and advocates for a radical shift in the way power is constituted by the media in the South African postcolony. With her years of experience as a newspaper journalist, Daniels writes with authority and illuminates complex issues about newsroom politics.

A semi-autobiographical lens and interviews with alienated media professionals add a personal element that will appeal to a range of readers interested in the workings of the media.

Preface

Acknowledgements

Acronyms

Tables and figures

Glossary

Chapter 1 Power and subjection in the media landscape

Chapter 2 The tension between the media, the state and Zuma’s African National Congress

Chapter 3 ‘Zupta’: Power and loss in investigative journalism

Chapter 4 The job loss tsunami in journalism

Chapter 5 Going online when you’re offline: The case of community media

Chapter 6 The anti-feminist backlash, the glass ceiling and online trolls

Chapter 7 Decolonial ‘green shoots’ in media

Chapter 8 Power, loss and reimagining journalismEpilogue

Appendices

References

Index

Sujets

Political Science

General officer

Journalism

General

Informations

Publié par	WITS University Press
Date de parution	01 juillet 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776146017
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0900€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

POWER AND LOSS IN SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNALISM
POWER AND LOSS IN SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNALISM
News in the age of social media
Glenda Daniels
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg 2001
www.witspress.co.za
Copyright © Glenda Daniels 2020
Published edition © Wits University Press 2020
Images and figures © Copyright holders
First published 2020
http://dx.doi.org.10.18772/12020075997
978-1-77614-599-7 (Paperback)
978-1-77614-603-1 (Hardback)
978-1-77614-600-0 (Web PDF)
978-1-77614-601-7 (EPUB)
978-1-77614-602-4 (Mobi)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
All images remain the property of the copyright holders. The publishers gratefully acknowledge the publishers, institutions and individuals referenced in captions for the use of images. Every effort has been made to locate the original copyright holders of the images reproduced here; please contact Wits University Press in case of any omissions or errors.
Project manager: Inga Norenius
Copyeditor: Monica Seeber
Proofreader: Alison Lockhart
Indexer: Sanet le Roux
Cover design: Triple M
Typesetter: Newgen
Typeset in 10 point Minion Pro
This book is dedicated to Margaret and Ivan
CONTENTS
TABLES AND FIGURES
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
CHAPTER 1 Power and Subjection in the Media Landscape
CHAPTER 2 The Media, the State and Zuma’s ANC
CHAPTER 3 ‘Zupta’: Power and Loss in Investigative Journalism
CHAPTER 4 The Job Loss Tsunami
CHAPTER 5 Going Online When You’re Offline: The Case of Community Media
CHAPTER 6 The Anti-Feminist Backlash, the Glass Ceiling and Online Trolls
CHAPTER 7 Decolonial ‘Green Shoots’
CHAPTER 8 Power, Loss and Reimagining Journalism
EPILOGUE
APPENDICES
NOTES
GLOSSARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
TABLES AND FIGURES TABLE 1.1 Media ownership patterns and race demographics TABLE 1.2 Newspaper circulation in South Africa, 2018 compared to 2014 TABLE 5.1 Record of news stories appearing on the first two to three pages of community newspapers, August 2018 TABLE 5.2 Local voices in community newspapers, 2018 TABLE 5.3 Voices in community newspapers, by gender, 2018 TABLE 5.4 Local voices in community newspapers, 2013 FIGURE 2.1 A timeline of the controversial tenure of Hlaudi Motsoeneng, acting chief operating officer of the SABC from 2011 to 2013 FIGURE 2.2 SABC journalist Suna Venter, one of the ‘SABC 8’ FIGURE 4.1 The work status of the journalists who participated in the survey FIGURE 4.2 Was there employer-funded career support as part of the redundancy package? FIGURE 6.1 Top ten beats FIGURE 7.1 Pretoria Girls High School student, Zulaikha Patel
PREFACE
I approached this work from my many selves, but one gaze was fixed. I believe that journalism in the public interest is critical to the deepening of democracy, and that finding and revealing the truth is becoming tougher and more dangerous in the world of social media. Indeed, social media, where misinformation is proliferating unchecked, is killing journalism.
One of my selves is that of an academic. From this position, I experimented with and deployed diverse theoretical frameworks to make sense of power and loss in the media in the twenty-first century. These theories were radical democracy blended with psychoanalytical concepts, decolonisation theory, black consciousness and feminist theory. I have deliberately simplified political and philosophical concepts for accessible reading.
Another self is that of a journalist. This relates to my history as a journalist and my writing on media matters these days, as well as my methods and techniques in gathering information – through research, interviewing, observation and ‘connecting the dots’.
A further self is that of an activist, advocating for better media ethics, diversity, freedom, access to information, feminist emancipation and transparency. For two chapters I also used surveys, one on job losses and the other on the anti-feminist backlash in the media.
The idea for this book first percolated in 2007 and, like coffee, it became stronger as it was left to brew. I also write about my personal tug-of-war with social media – the idea was not to examine social media and technology and their effects but, rather, to look at different aspects of journalism and to examine how it was changing in terms of power and loss – for instance, the power journalism evinced in the investigation of corruption and the loss it suffers through the harrassment of journalists (this is dealt with more deeply in chapter 1 and, indeed, throughout the book). All the chapters show how social media and technology have profoundly affected the news media landscape in South Africa, which mirrors the international situation but has its own nuances.
In 2007, when I worked in a print media newsroom in Rosebank, Johannesburg, and social media began to gain traction, I had reservations about the possible downsides. I knew I could not write then about my misgivings, which were based on instinct and feelings, not on fact. No one could know for sure that social media would become toxic platforms for divisive and polarising politics. Nor that journalists, particularly women, would be attacked online; community print media would die and find new life on Facebook; or that there would be further marginalising of the poor who could not afford smartphones and data. I didn’t know that job losses in journalism would be a bloodbath of lost skills, expertise and diversity. It was too early to research this back in 2007, and I needed to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’. It was also too early in 2011, when I was working in another newsroom, also in Rosebank, and where we were hauled off to a seminar and told to sing the new mantra of ‘digital first’– and even given T-shirts that said ‘digital first’, and encouraged to sign up to Twitter if we hadn’t already.
By 2018, amassing data from the news media landscape to make sometimes suggestive, sometimes definitive and sometimes reflective findings had become easier. The conundrums the craft of journalism faces are worse than most imagined they would become. For example, by 2019 the calls to regulate and tax Facebook and Google had become louder around the world but not in South Africa. Many governments and nongovernmental organisations internationally, especially in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, have instituted commissions of inquiry into the state of news media. These inquiries are reaching similar conclusions and a new regime of tax reform is necessary for the giants Google and Facebook that are now gobbling up journalism.
Lurking in every chapter of this book is how the power of social media, and the issues that arise from it – misinformation, mal-information, disinformation and propaganda – have overtaken journalism. Audiences consume media in new ways. Media companies and their management executives seem to be unimaginative in dealing with such crises – apart from laying off staff and making senior and skilled journalists redundant in order to cut their bills. They chase innovation but seem to show few results; they chase clicks, metrics and search engine optimisation and efficient algorithms that can replace human journalists. All the while, something valuable is getting lost – fact-based, ethical journalism that is in the public interest.
Times quickly change. My first book, an academic monograph, Fight for Democracy: The ANC and the Media in South Africa , featured a political struggle as the (ANC) wrestled with the media for ideological hegemony instead of recognising the separate role it had in a democracy. In this book, the ANC does not dominate every chapter. In fact, it hardly features at all. The ruling party appears to have enough of its own problems, mainly of its own making. For instance, a few months before the national election in May 2019, the ANC was blaming ‘sabotage’ for the electricity blackouts. Subsequently, the ANC-led government’s newly minted president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was ‘shocked’ at what was going wrong. The ANC urged its disastrous behemoth, the power entity Eskom, to provide electricity, despite knowing that in the past decade this entity, through cadre deployment, lacked technical expertise. In the ‘new era’ since 2018 under President Ramaphosa there appeared to be a commitment to end the scourge of corruption, and perhaps the ruling party recognised that news in the public interest was valuable. Nevertheless, although Ramaphosa mentioned just about everything else in his two-hour State of the Nation speech in February 2019, he said not a word about the contribution that journalism, particularly investigative journalism, has played, for instance, in outing the ‘Zupta’ crooks. He asked us to ‘watch this space’ for action against the corrupt, for growth in the economy and for combating violence against women – among at least 20 other issues.
News media in the public interest includes digging hard to find the truth, such as why South Africa is having power blackouts in an age when all techno optimists and determinists are cheering the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Public interest journalism includes investigative journalism, and the space for women journalists to bring diversity to news and tell their stories without fear of being ‘trolled’. Public interest journalism includes local communities having access to media that focuses on their own voices and issues, rather than relying on national news, which often has little bearing on their day-to-day realities. Public interest journalism needs diversity in the content of stories and the gender composition of newsrooms.
MY FACEBOOK STORY IN A LITTLE MORE DETAIL
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