A post about Dave Bullard made me realise that media freedom is a fuzzy concept – the question is not “am I free?” but rather “where on the freedom spectrum do I lie?” So I checked out Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index 2008 and discovered South Africa’s tied 36th with the United States. “Golly! What the blazes?” I thought, “This is surely an untruth!” To keep my mind from imploding I reasoned a few reasons for this: it’s a French organisation. And no one’s taken the French seriously since Napoleon. Plus, there are lies, there are damn lies, and then there are statistics; it could be a problem with aggregated locations since the States is a big place and New York could be freer than, say, Wyoming. Laws designed to combat terrorism could be dragging them down. Or I could be wrong. I could be wrong. As the squeeze of implosion relaxed, I decided all those explanations were boring anyway, and came up with this…
The above clip was produced by Conan O’Brien, and helped to re-elect Finnish president Tarja Halonen. Finland ranked fourth in the world for press freedom, yet this American input was so uniquely exciting that it made a deep impact. Funny and original as Conan’s campaign was, election ads (and their spoofs) are standard fare in America, while in South Africa we saw our very first ones this year and they were neither original nor critical. To explain this, I created a child-model of media freedom:
The Press Freedom Index’s questions actually measure press impedance (which include things like how many journalists were killed in the past year), but doesn’t capture the strength of media institutions and traditions, or the willingness of individuals (important or otherwise) to engage in public discourse. I reckon media drive in the United States is a car battery – here it’s a nine-volt – so even though apparent resistance to the media might be the same, they’re a shining globe of media expression and we’re a dim lamp.
Why isn’t the media stronger in South Africa? Sure you could say it’s young, but I don’t buy that – especially since we’re supposed to have a very activisty past, complete with Journos Risking Their Lives for Truth™. Besides, one doesn’t need much money to take a satirical, popular, entertaining jab at politics. No, instead the media suffers from a chronic lack of ambition. You see, normally the ambitious are rewarded for their efforts, encouraging others to be ambitious too, but in South Africa I think this is discouraged by the wire-cutter in the wings.
The wire-cutter in the wings is the looming punishment presented to those who push the envelope. In other words, media impedance is reactionary: only once a sleeping bear has been prodded with the abrasive, outspoken pole of critique might it run onto the stage wielding a pair of wire-cutters with the intention of snipping media expression. Take the Zapiro TV show for example; it received funding from the SABC for a pilot, but once it was created it was canned for being too controversial. Or the Nando’s ad involving Julius Malema, when ANCYL threatened violence and forced Nando’s to do that clever little shuffle of blurring the Julius puppet out. Anticipating the effort of making severe commentary, most of the media battery just up and buggers off, coming to a cool equilibrium with the societal and political forces that could offer resistance.
Thus, I reckon media expression is a contest of wills and, in a country where that travesty of a media bill actually got through parliament, it’s easier to fire Bullard than to endure a shit-storm, it’s easier to be unambitious than to be edgy… It’s easier to do merely what is allowed rather than to do what is praiseworthy.
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And let’s face it, most of our journalist/editors seem to be rather poor.
The next article on Zimbabwe that says “which critics blame on his land resettlement programme” is going to result in that writer being tracked down and subjected to a harangue about “he said, she said” journalism.
Economies are based on the idea of property and production, carrying out what amounts to a massive eminent domain on the entire country kills the concept of the first and the subsequent chaos caused the death of production.
Mugabe screwed the pooch, but the media titters around like a bunch of nervous nellies.