Editors speak out about threats to media
Newspaper banned seven times but refused to wither away
AWOMAN born into an anti-apartheid newspaper family as well as editors from newspapers in neighbouring countries have told cautionary tales around the muzzling of the media.
Speaking at an SA National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) event celebrating Media Freedom Day yesterday, Lynn Carneson McGregor recalled lessons learnt from her father, Fred Carneson.
Carneson was the manager and then editor of the antiapartheid newspaper The Guardian. The paper was banned seven times in 26 years, but each time it re-emerged with a new name, among them New Age and Spark.
Members of the newspaper’s staff included Brian Bunting, Govan Mbeki and Ruth First. McGregor remembered the turbulent times that the newspaper and its staff were subjected to and used the opportunity to impart advice to journalists who attended the event from across the Southern African Development Community region.
“Journalists, if you’re under threat… please do not campaign on your own. Your power is in the unity of purpose,” she said.
McGregor also spoke out against the increased use of hate speech.
“It worries me today that I’m hearing hate speech from people in power. Hate does not encourage a country to flourish, live freely, live safely.”
After the documentary about the newspaper, The Trouble with Truth, was screened, three panellists engaged in a debate about media freedom in their respective countries.
Mpho Dibeela, managing editor of Botswana newspaper The Patriot on Sunday, said their government was becoming increasingly sensitive about what the media published and that journalists were starting to worry about media freedom.
He mentioned the arrest of the Sunday Standard’s editor, Outsa Mokone, on sedition charges last year as one of the worrying incidents.
During the question and answer session, he pointed out that newspapers which were critical of the government had seen a drastic decline in advertising, which put them under immense financial pressure.
Fernando Goncalves, editor of the Mozambican newspaper Savana, told the audience that although his country had good laws protecting media freedom, these were under threat from another law – crimes against state security.
“If you criticise the head of state or their representatives, you have committed a crime against the security of the state,” he explained.
Journalists from two newspapers who published an open letter by an academic which criticised the president for the crisis in his country were charged under this law in 2013, but found not guilty, he said.
City Press editor Ferial Haffajee told of her exhaustion with the fight against the adoption of the Protection of State Information Bill and a media appeals tribunal.
“The past seven years have been distracting and extremely expensive… We live in an ominous time,” she said.
The Sanef event also served to commemorate Black Wednesday, when three outspoken newspapers and several organisations were banned in 1977. PATRIOTIC reporting and the role of the media in reporting responsibly was the focus of the commemoration of Black Wednesday by the National Press Club yesterday, at the annual Percy Qoboza memorial lecture held at Unisa.
Speakers at the event, held in remembrance of the closing down of The World newspaper and the detention of its editor Percy Qoboza, agreed that patriotic reporting was about the people and the articulation of their stories.
“Our relationship with the government is relatively and healthily tense, but at least none of us are in jail. No newspaper has been banned since 1994 and our constitutional guarantees and protection remain intact,” said Moshoeshoe Monare, incoming managing editor of the Sunday Times and The Times.
Delivering the keynote address at Unisa’s department of communication science, Monare said the legacy left by Qoboza was the perfect example of patriotic reporting.
“Qoboza told the story of his people. He was always in touch. He lived with them in their communities and was able to witness and experience their terrible conditions,” he said.
Exposing the corrupt and the dishonest and scrutinising the exercise of power by the government, the legislature, the judiciary, the corporate world and civil society were also elements that made up patriotic reporting.
Pretoria News editor Val Boje, a panellist at the lecture, said it was unpatriotic of media houses not to tell the truth.
“It is unpatriotic not to expose inefficiencies. We as the media must tell the story of the people,” she said.
Also on the panel was the chief editor of Beeld, Die Burger and Volksblad at Media24, Jo van Eeden, who said press freedom went hand in hand with privileges and responsibilities.