Can you believe what the SABC Chief Financial Officer, Robin Nicholson, said in Business Day? He tried to make out that he was just a bookkeeper and should not be held responsible for their over-spending.
Continue Reading 2 comments March 25th, 2009
Having opened up bureaux across the world, the SABC now has to plan the closure of most of them at a cost of many millions of rands. I am told by a senior and excellent source within the SABC that the budget for these bureaux is R500-m for the next three years - clearly not sustainable in a climate of severe cost-cutting.
Continue Reading 2 comments March 17th, 2009
When it takes a comedy show to take on a leading financial show, and nail them for missing the big story in the last year, everything is upside down in the world of journalism. “We are both snake-oil salesman,” Jon Stewart of the Daily Show told Jim Cramer of CNBC, “but we tell people we are snake-oil salesman. You tell people you are experts.” Watch it at The Daily Show.
Continue Reading Add comment March 14th, 2009
Een of ander tyd verlede jaar daag ek by die SAUK op om aan SAFM se 08:00-debat deel te neem. In die ateljee vind ek twee onbemande televisiekameras en ’n paar aanmekaar geflanste baniere agter die aanbieder Jeremy Maggs.
Continue Reading Add comment March 14th, 2009
Sometime last year, I arrived at the SABC to participate in SAFM’s 8am debate to find two unmanned television cameras in the studio and some makeshift banners behind presenter Jeremy Maggs.
I was taken aback, not least of all because I was dressed for early–morning radio, banking on no-one but the genial Maggs having to see me. The cameras, I was told, were there to broadcast the show on the newly-launched flagship station, SABC International.
Continue Reading Add comment March 11th, 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
The SABC now says that it is basing its sharing out of election coverage on the number of Parliamentary seats held by a party, and will not therefore be covering the manifesto launch of the new party, Cope. They can’t be saying this with a straight face.
Continue Reading Add comment January 23rd, 2009
The SABC should take a look at one of the key recommendations made by the Sunday Times Review Panel: the idea of a Public Editor.
Continue Reading January 18th, 2009
How rude can you be about your boss? In exchange for paying you a salary, can you employer expect you to give up your right to criticise them? That’s the question being raised as the fight for freedom of expression moves from the lofty corridors of power to the places of everyday life, such as the factory floor and the academy.
Continue Reading 1 comment December 4th, 2008
My quote of the week comes from the representative for L’Oréal South Africa, Celeste Tema, denying that they lightened the skins of some of the models in their advertisements. “When we airbrush,” she said, “we make sure the image is an honest reflection of the (subject).”
Continue Reading Add comment October 31st, 2008
Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications is trying to fix the mess-up it made with the SABC board, but could just as easily make things worse.
Continue Reading Add comment July 8th, 2008
Something has to be done to break the current SABC logjam, but I am not sure the proposed new law giving the government power to get rid of the board is the right way to go about it.
Continue Reading 1 comment July 5th, 2008
Walk around the sparkling new high-tech newsroom that eTV has built for eNews, its 24-hour news pay-TV channel, and you sense a small, spunky station coming of age.
Continue Reading 1 comment June 8th, 2008
Professor Anton Harber directs the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University. He is former editor of the Mail & Guardian.
Full bio
Among the main results from the World Association of Newspaper’s Newsroom Barometer (a survey of 700 editors and senior news execs in 120 countries) for this year:
- 86% believe integrated print and online newsrooms will become the norm, and 83% believe journalists will be expected to be able to produce content for all media within five years.
- Two-thirds believe some editorial functions will be outsourced, despite frequent newsroom opposition to the practice.
- A plurality - 44% - believe on-line will be the most common platform for reading news in the future, compared with 41% last year. Thirty-one cited print (down from 35% last year), 12% mobile and 7% e-paper. The rest were unsure.
- A majority of editors - 56%- believe news in the future will be free, up from 48% from last year’s survey. Only one-third believe the news will remain paid for, while 11% were unsure. - From Editors’ Weblog
There is a crisis in trust and communication between the British public and the mainstream media, a new report has concluded. The gulf between public expectations of news provision and the actual nature of articles, which oscillate between esoteric or irresponsible, leaves readers feeling confused and excluded.
The report, entitled ‘Public Trust In The News’ was conducted by researchers from Manchester and Leeds Universities and was published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. - From Editors Weblog
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)
A recent piece by me on the Zapiro cartoon row which appeared in Comment is Free, a Guardian blog.
