SABC’s Sisulu Commission is going to hear some hot new evidence: the story of how head of news Snuki Zikalala sneaked a preview of a current affairs show for the gentlemen of the presidency - without telling those who made the programme.
Continue Reading 1 comment July 18th, 2006
SABC TV ran on Sunday morning its new media show, The Public Interest. The most striking thing about a programme that was attempting to address issues of quality and professionalism in the media, was how low-quality and un-professional it was.
Continue Reading Add comment July 2nd, 2006
The SABC controversy rolls on. CEO Dali Mpofu has appointed an independent inquiry to look into whether there has been a ban on certain political commentars. A group of regular media commentators are circulating a letter saying they would not comment on SABC until it is clear that there is no “blacklist” of them or their colleagues.
Continue Reading Add comment June 25th, 2006
When he took on his own employers live on air, SABC presenter John Perlman demonstrated journalism of integrity, but he also reminded us of what a powerful medium radio can be. Now what does the SABC do?
Continue Reading 12 comments June 23rd, 2006
When you read Dali Mpofu’s 10-page diatribe against the “rightwing conspirators� who have criticized the SABC, skip to the very end. The most revealing part is in the final paragraph.
Continue Reading Add comment June 16th, 2006
SABC chief executive Dali Mpofu phoned in to Radio 702 last night and made an astounding admission: he has not even seen the documentary about President Thabo Mbeki that is at the centre of controversy because of the public broadcaster’s refusal to show it.
Continue Reading Add comment June 12th, 2006
I viewed “Unauthorised: Mbekiâ€?, the documentary that SABC is refusing to screen, today - about an hour before the SABC threatened court action to stop the producers from showing it to anyone. The programme takes a tough, unflattering look at the president, but I found it interesting and engaging.
Continue Reading 1 comment June 6th, 2006
How seriously should one take another set of “new strategic directions� at the SABC? There was not much reaction to last week’s announcements by new CEO Dali Mpofu simply because most observers are weary of the predictable regularity of such grand moves at the public broadcaster – and their failure to deliver much of substance.
But there might just be something of significance in this one.
Continue Reading 4 comments April 25th, 2006
eTV’s Marcel Golding has been hopping around the continent buying TV and radio stations.
Continue Reading 3 comments April 3rd, 2006
The controversial Arabic TV station, Al-Jazeera, is getting ready to launch its global English-language channel in just a few months, promising a very different view of the world from CNN, BBC and other international channels. Why then were they wheeling out old BBC and CNN hands to tell us about it at their headquarters in Doha last week?
Continue Reading 2 comments February 12th, 2006
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)
