An SAfm producer called me yesterday to ask if I would join them on their Sunday media programme - on Human Rights Day - to talk with Ashraf Garda about media infringements of peoples’ rights. Isn’t that interesting? The problem is framed purely as media infringing rights, and there is no desire to talk about the overwhelming majority of times when the media protected, promoted and encouraged peoples’ rights.
Continue Reading Add comment March 19th, 2011
The ANC were notably absent from this week’s Press Council public hearings. Having called for reform of the Council, and having welcomed the Council’s move to open up a public debate, the ANC did not make any submissions and did not even send anyone along to listen. They could not be bothered to show even perfunctory interest.
Continue Reading 2 comments February 18th, 2011
The Democratic Alliance held the high ground on media freedom - and then gave it away when they “blacklisted” a journalist.
Continue Reading 1 comment February 18th, 2011
The Oscar-nominated documentary, “The Most Dangerous Man in America”, could not be more timely. Released last year, it told the story of Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and was charged with espionage – and puts in dramatic perspective the current row over Wikileak’s Julian Assange.
Continue Reading Add comment February 16th, 2011
The appointment of the outspoken Jimmy Manyi to the joint task of head of the Government Communications and Information Service (GCIS) and chief government spokesperson is an unexpected one. There are a number of reasons for this.
Continue Reading 2 comments February 3rd, 2011
Okay, it’s not so new, but it is becoming more prevalent - and it is certainly changing my reading habits. I am talking about curated sites - where smart people select and present information and articles from all over the web, and put them in an accessible form for people in a hurry to find good reads.
Continue Reading Add comment January 30th, 2011
There was already a crowd singing struggle songs and chanting slogans when I arrived at a church hall in Diepsloot at 5pm on a Tuesday. By 6pm, there were at least 600 rowdy people crammed into the hot hall.
Continue Reading Add comment January 30th, 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.
Continue Reading Add comment January 28th, 2011
Sandi Majali was a large and interesting South Africa character: loved and hated, admired and maligned. This controversial businessman who was buried this week was many things but definitely not straightforward and one-dimensional. Unless you rely on The New Age (TNA) newspaper.
Continue Reading 3 comments January 3rd, 2011
What a pleasure to return from a six-month sabbatical and find that there have been two of the most exciting developments in our newspaper world in many years: the launch of a new newspaper, The New Age (TNA), and the launch of the Sunday Times isiZulu edition.
Continue Reading 3 comments January 2nd, 2011
It is worth parsing Jackson Mthembu’s latest attack on the Mail & Guardian, which you can find on politicsweb.
Continue Reading 5 comments September 5th, 2010
The darkest of clouds hangs over South African journalism this week, following the admission by a former Cape Argus reporter that he took money from an ANC politician to assist in his intra-party battles.
Continue Reading 2 comments July 14th, 2010
I was quoted on a site called sify.com saying this: “The World Cup made us crazy. Money was spent carefully. I think the government will have a tough time in maintaining the stadiums. They will soon turn into white elephants,” said Anton Harber, professor at the University of Witwatersrand. I did not know when and where I might have said such babble, nor did I remember ever speaking to a reporter named Abishek Roy.
Continue Reading 1 comment July 14th, 2010
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)
