Every October, SA’s media fraternity commemorates Black Wednesday. On October 19 1977, the racist apartheid regime shut down independent media in a desperate attempt to silence dissenting voices. Progressive journalists and editors, among them Zwelakhe Sisulu, Percy Qoboza, Joe Thloloe, Mathatha Tsedu and Aggrey Klaaste, were imprisoned. Qoboza’s paper, The World, was banned.
Today, media freedom and freedom of expression are enshrined in the constitution. This freedom notwithstanding, the media has been accused of bias, which is demonstrated in reporting ideological discourses where the media tends to support and promote the interests of the entrenched ruling class. SA’s ruling class can be understood through our economic structure. In other words, those who control the economy.
The private sector, which makes up about 70% of the economy, is largely controlled by white males. Black South Africans make up 80% of the economically active population and own less than 30% of companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, according to the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Commission.
The very same ruling class is often vocal against policy proposals such as nationalisation and land expropriation, perceived by their proponents as interventions to transform the economy and address our well-documented socioeconomic challenges. These proposals are scorned as lunatic fringe, likely to damage the economy, affect investor confidence or chase away investors.
Media power must be addressed. Part of the solution lies in re-imagining the current model that is interlocked in the capitalist structures and thus operates on the basis of profit maximisation
The media is central in advancing the views of the ruling class when it comes to ideologically charged issues. This has led to clashes with social actors such as the ANC and some of its allies who perceive the media to be biased.
The media has been accused by the likes of Zizi Kodwa, a former ANC spokesperson, of behaving like an opposition party and its transformation has been brought into question. In 2012 the ANC said “the print media continues to be a contested terrain that reflects the ideological battles and power relations based on race, class and gender in our society”.
After the 2014 elections, Malusi Gigaba told journalists: “You campaigned hard against the ANC and we beat you. We defeated you.” He went on: “We know you never loved us. And we don’t have a problem with that.”
The ANC perceives the media as problematic and untransformed. Nomvula Mokonyane, in her capacity as minister of communications, told the 2018 Brics media forum that transformation of the media remained a concern for the government, especially the ownership being in “white hands”.
The accusations appear to reach a crescendo on ideologically charged issues. The media, which is highly robust, diverse and one of the most independent on the continent, has often challenged these accusations. But with this independence comes responsibility. Without the media, ideas would not flow and debates would be stifled.
Is the perception of media bias real or imaginary? How does the media represent ideologically contested discourses? What should be its role? Does the media construct hegemony for the ruling capitalist class? These are some of the questions that the book, Constructing Hegemony: The SA Commercial Media and the (Mis)Representation of Nationalisation, grapples with in its endeavour to unravel the media’s role in the nationalisation debate, in particular, and in relation to the government, business and ordinary people.
The coverage of nationalisation in the mainstream commercial English newspapers in SA between 2008 and 2018 is analysed. This, coupled with in-depth semi-structured interviews with some of the media role players, revealed that while some level of importance is accorded to such discourses, in the case of nationalisation, there was capitalist bias in the manner in which the media represented it. A large percentage of articles were against nationalisation. This is also carried out in opinion articles and editorials.
An interesting observation, though, is the use of primary definers, in this instance the government and mining leaders who not only dominated the discourse but converged against nationalisation.
Political figures like former minister of mineral resources Susan Shabangu received rave reviews from the media for declaring at the 2011 mining indaba: “There will be no nationalisation in my lifetime.”
Together with the then CEO of Anglo American, Cynthia Carroll, who was consistent in portraying nationalisation as damaging to the economy, they were the stars of the show.
Exponents of nationalisation, such as the ANC Youth League and its then president Julius Malema, although mentioned in most articles, were never used extensively as sources.
This convergence between the government and private capital arises because governments’ capacity to intervene on behalf of marginalised social forces is constrained in liberal democracies, underpinned by capitalist logic. These constraints are, according to British political scientist David Held, “imposed by the requirements of private accumulation, to systematically limit policy options”.
It is the capitalist system of private investment, private property and other accumulation imperatives associated with capitalism that “create objective exigencies that must be met if economic growth and stable development are to be sustained”.
Democratic governments are caught in this web, aware that if capitalist arrangements are threatened and disturbed, they will precipitate economic chaos that will greatly undermine their legitimacy.
It is in this realm that the media plays a pivotal role in reproducing the dominant ideology that fundamentally maintains capitalism as the most logical, inevitable and immutable system. For example, the framing of nationalisation discourse as damaging to the economy, because it scares off investors, entrenches the capitalist perspective.
For inclusivity, then, the question of media power must be addressed.
This is done wantonly through carefully selected sources positioned as experts who advance a notion against the discourse while silencing and omitting the views of the subalternated working class and its representatives. This representation cannot be fully comprehended outside of the media’s location in the power structures of capitalism.
It is for this reason that the control and influence of the media and its content are important for various social actors. Part of the problem is that this media forms what David Freedman, a US statistician, describes as an “unaccountable force” that wields power and influence “without a democratic mandate and is reserved for some of the wealthiest and most powerful corporate figures, who have their own economic and ideological interest”.
In the final analysis, the perceived bias discredits the hard work of the media and may lead to a trust deficit. For inclusivity, then, the question of media power must be addressed. Part of the solution lies in re-imagining the current model that is interlocked in the capitalist structures and thus operates on the basis of profit maximisation.
A public alternative media, whose ethos lies in serving everyone through good-quality information and education, and thereby becoming a public good, has to be contemplated. Could the digitalised media constitute a beginning of this? That’s a debate for another day.
• Radebe is the author of Constructing Hegemony: The SA Commercial Media and the (Mis)Representation of Nationalisation, published by UKZN Press
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