It is certainly an appropriate time to be asking about the limits of free speech, and the right of people to use words and phrases which hurt others, and which may upset their sense of dignity.
Continue Reading Add comment June 8th, 2009
Organisations are popping up all over the place to engage in the fight over the future of the SABC. There is the SOS (Save our SABC) Coalition, and the Television Industry Emergency Coalition. A march on the institution is planned for next week. Online chat and email is buzzing with ideas, proposal, debates, memoranda and candidates’ lists.
Continue Reading 2 comments June 8th, 2009
Hierdie is ’n pleidooi aan Jacob Zuma: Gryp die oomblik van jou verkiesing en jou verheffing tot president aan om jou verhouding met die media op ’n nuwe grondslag te plaas. Jy kan nie, jy kan eenvoudig nié jou presi?dentskap begin deur redakteurs, koerante, skrywers en spotprentkunstenaars te dagvaar nie.
Continue Reading Add comment April 18th, 2009
Latest news is that Mail & Guardian staff have been warned that they will be told in two weeks who is going to be retrenched and who can stay. Attempts are being made to prevent this, but things look tough.
Continue Reading 3 comments March 25th, 2009
The idea of a public editor for the SABC is gaining traction. Asked to expand on the idea for the Save our SABC campaign, I said the following …
Continue Reading Add comment March 19th, 2009
At a time when journos are being retrenched across the country quicker than Wall Street bankers, there is a push to start a Professional Journos’ Association. A great idea.
Continue Reading 1 comment March 14th, 2009
There are two fascinating current legal actions worth keeping an eye on for their wider impact on our media.
Continue Reading Add comment March 9th, 2009
It is worth keeping an eye on the Constitution Court fight this week between corporate giant Monsanto and the NGO Biowatch, because it will define the space that NGO’s have to use the legal system.
Continue Reading 1 comment February 16th, 2009
One things has become clear – the saga of the SABC board is going to drag on for months, leaving the organisation with uncertain leadership at a time when it is under serious political and financial pressure.
Continue Reading Add comment February 11th, 2009
I was struck by how dignified and appropriate was the President’s response to the collapse of the story of his pregnant, young girlfriend. He chose his words carefully, and he chose them well. “I will drop a line to the Press Ombudsman,” he said.
Continue Reading Add comment February 10th, 2009
The right to privacy, specifically for ANC and national leaders, is going to be a focus of attention this week, after some Sunday papers took us deep into the private life of President Kgalema Motlanthe. The did not push us as far as the Sowetan did last Monday, when they told us he goes to bed each night alone “like a monk”. But the Sunday Independent did let us know that apart from his estranged wife, he appears to have two lady friends, one of whom is half his age and pregnant.
Continue Reading Add comment January 25th, 2009
One of new US President Barack Obama’s first executive orders has reversed the Bush administration move towards secrecy. It is a shift that will have long-lasting impact.
Continue Reading Add comment January 22nd, 2009
Is ANC president Jacob Zuma’s polygamy a private matter? The ANC said it was this week, when questioned about his his latest marriage plans. But I am not so sure.
Continue Reading Add comment January 16th, 2009
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
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)
