Sisulu to hear evidence of Snuki helping the presidency

July 18th, 2006

I am told that this is some of the evidence to be presented soon to the commission set up to hear allegations that the public broadcaster had a “blacklist” of commentators who were critical of the president. If true, it promises to blow things open - as it is the first substantial evidence of Zikalala having an inappropriate relationship with politicians and officials.

The commission is headed by former SABC head honcho and long-respected journalist Zwelakhe Sisulu. With him is esteemed senior counsel Gilbert Marcus, who has a long record of fighting for freedom of expression. They have enlisted the help of Guy Berger of Rhodes University.

Their terms of reference have not been made public. This is a pity, as it is important that this allows them to go wider than the actual “blacklist”. If the commission is to search for a list of names, they will almost certainly never find it. But if they are to ask what is wrong with the SABC news and current affairs coverage, they can make a real contribution.

I believe the question we have to ask is this: how is it that the SABC can set up all the right structures, policies and codes to govern news and current affairs - and yet still run into an endless set of problems around the independence of their coverage?

I think the answer lies in newsroom values and culture. What do I mean by this? Every news operation develops a set of practices and entrenched values which allows them to make the quick decisions they have to make under pressure. Faced with deadlines and running stories, editors cannot start asking the fundamentals before they make decisions - they have to have established values on which they base the snap decisions which are at the heart of effective editing.

These are embedded in reporting practices (does one doorstep powerful people to get their comment?), choice of stories to pursue (do we want to break hard news, or just respond to events of the day, like media conferences and photo-opportunities?), editing of stories (do I use pictures of the president looking silly?) and final choices of stories (if the minister has not responded to the allegations, do I run them anyway?)

Different values pertain at different media outlets - and so they should. The Star has a different role from SAfm or the Mail & Guardian - and you would expect them to reflect different news values and cultures. That is why they will all choose difference lead stories, make different news judgements and even highlight different facts. It is called media diversity, and we thrive on it.

The values are best revealed by the questions an editor will ask when deciding to run a story. At the Mail & Guardian, the questions may be: is this hard-hitting enough? Is this provocative and interesting? If not, there is no reason for a weekly like this one to run it.

At Business Day, an editor might say this is all very well and worthy, but are business executives interested in it? If not, out it goes.

At the Star, which has been on a big push to gain women readers, they might ask if a story is of interest to, or offensive to, women.

I believe that the question being asked at the SABC is: will this offend any of my superiors in the SABC or, even worse, draw criticism from powerful people? In other words, there is a culture of fear and conformity - and this is not one in which news stories are broken, stories are unpredictable and thought-provoking and current affairs is challenging and engaging.

For example, one person involved in the Zuma trial coverage told me that they had five editors scrutinise every word of her script, mainly concerned to keep her on the straight and narrow. She could do nothing but down-the-line court reporting. That is a recipe to produce boring stories. It explains why, in a case which raised myriad issues around gender, for example, the SABC was unable to explore them in any meaningful way.

The best way to understand the SABC’s coverage may not be in looking at what they cover - but what they don’t cover, or what they do so blandly that the issues are sucked out of them.

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, TV