January 28th, 2011
Who had the worst public relations this week: the Nelson Mandela Foundation, with their two-line non-statement about Madiba’s health, or the Joburg Mayor with his “There is no crisis”? It’s a close tie. And third place goes to the President of Egypt.
Someone inform our dear mayor that you can’t tell 85 000 people in danger of having their electricity cut off that there is no crisis. Tell us how you are fixing it, tell us how long it will take, tell us how you will handle the problem cases … but don’t tell us not to worry.
And someone tell all those around Madiba what needs to be planned to manage properly any news around the man, good or bad. If you don’t want rumours and speculation, you have to be telling us all what is going on. If you want the media to get it right, you have to tell them what is right, and have them trust you.
First, they need to decide who is speaking for the man: the Foundation, the Presidency or that tin-pot medical general in an ill-fitting jacket? It was not clear for the last few days and it was not clear at today’s media conference.
Second of all, create a 24-hour hotline. Call all the reporters, editors, foreign correspondents and others together and say that you will do your bit to avoid rumour and speculation, and ask them to do their bit in a responsible and respectful way. Ask them to call the hotline whenever they have a Mandela story and promise that you will respond as quickly and openly and honestly as you can. And then they have no reason to run unsubstantiated stories. Or at least less reason.
And get the doctor to look like a doctor: a rumpled white coat, a stethoscope sticking out the pocket, some Latin medical jargon, signs of sleep deprivation …
Addendum: Acting President Kglaema Motlanthe deserves credit for acknowledging by the end of the week that communication had not been up to scratch and that this would improve. That’s the first step towards getting it right.
Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism
Anton Harber: Media
Professor Anton Harber directs the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University. He is former editor of the Mail & Guardian.
Full bio
Daily newspaper sales, South Africa
(Ave sales Jul-Dec)
1960 - 681 053 (Population 17,3m)
1970 - 723 566 (22m)
1980 - 803 229 (27,5m)
1990 - 1 214 396 (35,2m)
2000 - 1 117 886 (44m)
2006 - 1 600 000 (47,3m)
2011 - 1 310 000 (49m)
(Sources: ABC and nationmaster.com)
“It was pure political theatre. The excited room was filled with government officials, government consultants, quasi-government agencies, politicians and pupils from government schools. As if on cue, the room rang with applause as one education victory after another was claimed. This was, after all, the annual drama in which the minister of basic education appears on stage to announce the Grade 12 National Senior Certificate (NSC) results …” - Educationist Jonathan Jansen, one of the few with the credibility to look critically at this “celebratory orgy of mediocrity”.
“The (Incwala) ceremony is cloaked in secrecy and marks the (Swaziland) king’s return to public life after a period of withdrawal and spiritual contemplation. Among its highlights is a symbolic demonstration by the king of his power and dominance in a process involving his penetration of a black bull … But last year’s selected bull, according to a recent account from a whistle-blowing Incwala initiate, objected strongly, and threw off Africa’s last absolute monarch.” - Some surprises in this (un-bylined) account of Swaziland politics in Southern African Report
“When the Great Zucchini arrived that Saturday morning, Don had no idea who he was. Frankly, he didn’t look like a great anything. He looked like a house painter, Don thought, with some justification. He wears no costume. He was in painter’s pants, a coffee-stained shirt and a two-day growth of beard. He toted his beat-up props in beat-up steamer trunks, with ripped faux leather and broken hinges hanging askew.” - A classic of magazine profiling, by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post.
Diepsloot (Jonathan Ball, 2011)
Diesploot: Of Frogs and Fractals, a public lecture at the University of Johannesburg, 4 August 2011
Troublemakers - The Best of South Africa’s Investigative Journalism (Jacana, 2101), edited by Anton Harber and Margaret Renn
Introduction - The Troublemakers: An account of the rise of a new wave of investigative journalism in South Africa.
What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic, edited by Kristin Palitza, Natalie Ridgard, Helen Struthers and Anton Harber (Fanele, 2010)
Reflections on Journalism in the Transition to Democracy - Ethics & International Affairs 18, no. 3 (2004).
Journalism in the Age of the Market
- Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture, Centre for Civil Society, University of KZN, Aug 2002
The Untimely Death of SA’s Finest Daily - Sunday Times, May 2005
“Two Newspapers, Two Nations? The Media and the Xenophobic Violence” from Go Home or Die Here, edited by Shireen Hassim Tawana Kupe and Eric Worby (WUP, 2008)
Remarks at Goedgedacht Forum, October 2008
The rise of social network journalism - From The 2009 Flux Trend Review (Macmillan, 2008)
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