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| Reactive state threatens vibrant media |
| August 03 2008 at 02:02PM |
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By Raymond Louw And so South Africa emerges 14 years after those first heady days of freedom to see its freedoms now being encroached upon, restrictions on the free flow of information are being steadily applied and others contemplated. In many national and provincial government departments that cheerful willingness to help has been replaced by surliness, obstruction and obfuscation. Reporters now speak freely of the many difficulties they face in trying to obtain information. Some government departments have centralised the information supply process so that only one person is empowered to answer media questions. Several years ago Mosiua Lekota, the defence minister, issued an edict that all information supplied to the media had to be approved by his office beforehand. That instilled a feeling of fear throughout the department, ensuring that no questions would be answered before the answer had gone through the time-consuming practice of being vetted by the minister's minions. Many officials in the department have given up on answering questions. The health ministry has also imposed restrictions on officials answering media questions. A cult of censorship is being nurtured. Departments ask the questioning reporter to call back later, but when they do cellphones are switched off. An increasing complaint from journalists is the actual refusal to answer questions or the withholding of information. Requests for information are often referred to other departmental officials who cannot supply the answers. Another tactic gaining currency is to request questions to be faxed or e-mailed. They are not answered timeously or are not answered at all. There are also instances of misleading or inaccurate information being given out. Some reporters are asked to request the information via the procedures of the Promotion of Access to Information Act, a time-consuming process that, if followed, would result in whatever information was eventually supplied being hopelessly out of date. At certain police stations only "good news" stories are issued, and news of violent crime grudgingly supplied only when reporters pose direct questions. This sunshine journalism approach has also become the practice of several parastatals. The latest form of censorship by the police has overtones of tyranny. A reporter or photographer is arrested at a crime scene on the grounds that he or she is interfering with the police in the conduct of their duties. This has become a reflex action by some police officers when photographs are being taken of their conduct at a crime scene. Several months ago Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi announced a restructuring of police information services, intended to prevent police on the beat from giving information to media by limiting this role to officers at provincial level. After the media protested, Selebi amended the system and asked the media to give it a try - but the media say it is not working. The police have erased images from photographers' cameras. This occurred when President Thabo Mbeki visited a medical clinic in Pretoria for a check-up, and again when Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the deputy president, had a meeting with Joyce Mujuru, the Zimbabwean vice-president, at a Johannesburg hotel. But perhaps the prime case of police censorship was the eviction of reporters from the magistrate's court when then Jacob Zuma, the the ANC deputy president, appeared on a rape charge. Attempts were also made to snatch reporters' notebooks when they covered the appearance of four police officers in a Germiston court on theft and attempted robbery charges. The legal process is increasingly being exploited to censor the media, the biggest victim being the Mail & Guardian, which has been the subject of several urgent court applications for interdicts to prevent the paper from publishing exposés about illegal or questionable conduct and corruption. Several of these applications have failed, but invariably the paper had to wait several days before being able to publish, incurring expensive legal fees and costly stop-go production processes. Other papers that have suffered similar attacks are the Sunday Times and The Sunday Independent, indicted from publishing the Danish cartoons that offended Muslims, and the Saturday Star, which, however, won when a coin dealer tried to gag it. Individually, these attempts at muzzling the media do not make much of an impact, but when compiled into a list they constitute a formidable indictment of official restrictive conduct. The antagonistic attitude of some of the country's leaders towards the media provides state employees and others with the excuse for their attacks on the media. Government leaders are particularly sensitive to criticism, and there has been much to criticise under the subject headings of corruption, which has assumed epidemic proportions; misconduct; maladministration, with the Eskom power-generation disaster being a prime example; the deterioration of hospital services; and, of course, poor service delivery at local government level. Such stories have been highly embarrassing to government leaders who have denigrated critical journalists, accusing them of "lack of responsibility", besmirching South Africa's good name, and racism. The latest charge is that the media is engaged in regime change. Ruling-party ire bubbles over from time to time on the ANC presidential website, ANC Today. One of the most scathing attacks appeared when President Thabo Mbeki held the presidency of the ANC and was probably penned by him. After reference to a claimed inaccurate press report, it stated that "it confirmed the message that the readers of our newspapers are well advised to treat everything that is published with the greatest scepticism, because, in all likelihood, it might be false. "For a long time already, we have complained about this phenomenon, according to which some in the media obviously understand that 'freedom of the press' means 'freedom of the press to invent news'." There is no record of the ANC taking the article complained about to the press ombudsman where its accuracy could have been tested. Essop Pahad, the minister in the presidency, angered by exposures in the Sunday Times about Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the health minister, abusing staff at a medical clinic and drinking while under treatment, threatened to impose a government-advertising boycott on the paper. Appointment vacancies in government departments would not have been advertised in the large appointments advertising section of the Sunday Times. The intention is clear, to reduce the paper's revenue, resulting in it cutting costs, which invariably means cutting back on news coverage, if not on staff. It is a pernicious form of censorship, which a Botswana high court ruled unconstitutional in that country. This has happened to other papers in South Africa. One of them, Grahamstown's Grocott's Mail - which also faces a freeze on contact with the paper's editorial department - is challenging the advertising ban in court. Mlambo-Ngcuka, when she was minerals and energy minister, proposed introducing legislation to compel journalists and civil-society groups to "speak responsibly" on sensitive matters, failing which they would be charged in court with incitement. The proposal was forcibly condemned by the media but, though it appears to have been placed on a back-burner, it illustrates the mindset of party leaders. On the claim that their offices, conveniently situated for nearly a century near the debating chamber in parliament, were urgently needed for accommodating interpreters and other staff, parliamentary officials removed members of the press gallery to another building in the parliamentary precinct. More than a year later, those offices are still vacant, confirming the media's view that the real purpose was to ensure that the press had minimum access to MPs in the parliamentary corridors and their off-the-record briefings. In addition to all these efforts to curb media reporting, government departments have been busy devising legislative restrictions. Though anti-terrorism legislation, enacted at the behest of the United States, has not been employed against journalists, it looms on the horizon as a potential threat. The more immediate legislative threat is the Films and Publications Amendment Bill, which ostensibly seeks to stop children being exposed to pornography or caught up in it as victims. The draft bill, however, reaches out to restrict reporting on other issues - which journalists say is censorship - the reporting of propaganda for war, incitement to violence, descriptions of sexual conduct and hate speech. The media has vigorously protested against this legislation, but ANC parliamentarians are doggedly pursuing it. Then there is the National Key Points Act, originally introduced by the apartheid government to protect important buildings requiring security. It is being reintroduced in a much broader form and is also vigorously opposed by media and legal groups as unconstitutional. But the cherry on the top for the ANC, and a corresponding low point for journalists, is the proposal mooted by the party at its Polokwane conference in December that a statutory media tribunal be set up to regulate the media and deal with complaints from the public against the press. Jessie Duarte, the ANC spokeswoman, spelt it out in these terms: "We believe there is a need for a place where the print media can be held accountable for things they say that are absolutely not true." She added that the ANC regarded the press's own self-regulatory ombudsman system as "toothless" and inadequate. The ANC view of the ombudsman is based on vague accusatory generalities. Despite all the protestations by the ANC that it upholds media freedom, journalists believe that such a body would be used to censor and punish the press for inaccuracy and wrongdoing as determined by the ANC. This results in the constitutionally unacceptable - state control of the media. Within the media itself there are constricting influences, including low salaries and lack of resources in newsrooms, a suspicion that publishers seeking maximum profits ignore their mission to keep the public informed, and a concentration of ownership, which reduces diversity. Even so, many newspapers still run expensive and time-consuming investigative journalism. This shows that South Africa's media is indeed vibrant, despite the gathering restrictions.
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