Truth and balance should be at the core of the state broadcaster’s bulletins, writes Eusebius McKaiser.
The best way for the SABC to suck up to the ANC is to be a brilliant public broadcaster rather than a useless state broadcaster.
I know it sounds weird, but just think about the impact that bad sucking up has on the brand of your political bosses. A well-functioning public broadcaster that holds all power to account, including the state, would be an institution that is loved and respected by all citizens. That can only help, and not hinder, the reputation of the ANC-led government.
It has puzzled me for years why it is that public servants are so bad at sucking up. They think that sucking up to power actually means running an institution into the ground. Idiots. If you run state-owned entities, from the SABC to SAA to Eskom, into the ground, you don’t do Luthuli House a favour. You do opposition parties a favour, because poorly run state-owned entities constitute a reason to vote for the opposition. This isn’t rocket science, surely?
Let’s take the SABC as a simple case in point. Can you imagine what it would do for the credibility of the SABC if you were to tune in to SAfm, or a special television broadcast, and hear an anchor asking the kinds of questions that make a minister, or the president himself, sweat, as they try to account for $10 million that left government coffers for a mysterious, non-existing ”diaspora” legacy programme somewhere abroad? Or the president being asked by a public broadcasting anchor whether he really thinks the public is stupid enough to believe that swimming pools are built as security features.
Well, the data speaks for itself. In the English language, at any rate, the competition from e.tv and eNCA means that, unlike years ago, many of us now rather watch the news bulletin on offer from the commercial alternatives to the SABC. And this is because of the flight of journalistic skill, talent and integrity from the SABC over the past 10 or so years as a direct result of the SABC acting like a state broadcaster rather than a public broadcaster.
The only people who benefit from this caricature of public broadcasting are the useless executives who care more for plundering the coffers of the state than they care for quality news, current affairs and entertainment programmes.
And of course there are exceptions, like Sakina Kamwendo and Siki Mgabadeli on SAfm or reporters and producers like Sherwin Bryce-Pease and Krivani Pillay, and a few others. But these exceptions don’t change a pattern of self-censorship.
At any rate, these exceptional individuals don’t work under optimal conditions of media freedom. They find themselves daily having to share creative energy between thinking about their work and thinking about how to push back against Orwellian attempts to gag them. No one can reach their full journalistic potential in that kind of environment. This is why even the exceptional individuals struggle to compete with the listenership figures of shows on commercial platforms.
This is obviously bad for democracy. It is crucial to think through the connections between a poorly run SABC and the quality of our democracy. For citizens to make political choices based on an honest assessment of the country they live in, citizens need the maximum amount of accurate information about the state. And, in addition, we need to be exposed to debates and discussions about the state that enable us to make informed decisions. We need to judge those in power by how, for example, they react to robust questions and exchanges when we switch on the telly or tune in to a radio station.
This is where the public broadcaster is critical to democracy’s flourishing. It’s not because commercial media don’t have social duties. Rather, a public broadcaster has the luxury of existing for the very purpose of providing nonpartisan services that are in the public’s interest.
If someone mainly, or exclusively, relies on the public broadcaster to tell him or her about the country we live in, then the public broadcaster can’t afford to mess us around with sunshine journalism and propagandistic nonsense.
The public broadcaster must put truth and balance at the heart of the news and its current affairs programming. And, in fact, many ANC politicians would welcome this, if only the SABC executives bothered asking them. One thinks, for example, of Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel’s brilliant engagement last year with the DA’s Tim Harris, who was the opposition party’s finance spokesman at the time, in an eNCA election debate on the economy.
Patel doesn’t need SABC executives to shield him from debate. Nor does, say, Blade Nzimande or even, for that matter, President Jacob Zuma himself.
The best way to suck up to these guys is to let them rise to the occasion when they meet excellent journalism. Anything else is a gift for the opposition.
* Eusebius McKaiser is the best-selling author of A Bantu In My Bathroom and Could I Vote DA? A Voter’s Dilemma.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Star