WELL, that was quite a frenzied pig-sticking, the sort of thing you'd expect at the tail end of a medieval carnival. I am, of course, referring to the response to the Gupta family's African News Network 7.

Here was such inept broadcasting that it reconfirmed a long-held suspicion that television cannot do journalism, but is otherwise excellent at furniture. Some of the gaffes were priceless. I found it hilarious, for example, that Grand Prix was pronounced "grand pricks" - but then only because the mispronunciation rang true; personally, I've always felt that "motorsport" was an activity that catered exclusively for such people.

I was, admittedly, initially alarmed at the jeering. After all, mistakes can and do happen. News anchors with more established, professional networks do fluff their lines. Production staff at the SABC have even inadvertently shown us moving clips from their porno collections.

Such "off script" moments are usually rare and fleeting. In the case of ANN7, the cock-ups came hard and fast, often with agonisingly awkward silences and presenters frozen in terror like mice in a serpent's gaze.

But after reconsideration, I concluded the derision, though cruel, was not inappropriate, coming as it did at the expense of President Jacob Zuma's special friends.

At a time when it appears there is little out there that is not Guptable, we can at least be reassured that, despite their very deep pockets, the family has been unable to buy our respect. It was also pleasing to see that, at the time of writing, at least one website, www.liveleaks.com, had not bowed to Gupta pressure, like YouTube, and removed the ANN7 howlers from the internet.

However, what has especially annoyed us all here at the Mahogany Ridge was the ANN7 billboard on alongside a Johannesburg highway with the contemptible caption: "We aren't old farts."

This, the regulars will tell you, is patently obvious. Had they taken the trouble to employ old farts, the network would not have been the international laughing stock it is today. Whatever faults they may have, old farts at least know that it is Cape Town, and not Johannesburg, that is the Mother City. They do not pronounce Springbok flyhalf Morne Steyn's first name as "mourn", and they do not call Australian cricket captain Michael Clark "Michelle".

This is the thing about old farts in the news game. They tend to get things right, and they take care that those around them do likewise. It is true that, due to the years they've put in at the hard news coalface, old farts have - in the words of a favourite song in these parts - skin like iron and breath as hard as kerosene. They may not be pretty, like the eye candy on ANN7, but old farts do the job. Properly.

In fact, if there's one thing wrong with old farts it is only this: they're expensive. This is why you won't find them in the newsrooms of our newspapers or TV news networks.

In the psychopathy of modern management, this was due to "rationalisation", a term every bit as offensive as "ethnic cleansing" or "wildlife management". What it really means, though, is that it is cheaper to exploit a young inexperienced schmuck than an experienced old fart. This is almost always done in the "interests of shareholders" but, oddly enough, never in the interests of journalism.

The culling has been particularly fierce in recent years, with the result, ably demonstrated by ANN7, that our media has grown inexorably dumb and weakened, so much so that it is now vulnerable to such repressive interventions as state secrecy laws.

But perhaps that's how life changes for old farts. The critic Joe Queenan put it thus to the New York Times: "You cannot fight the zeitgeist and you cannot fight corporations. The genius of corporations is that they force you to make decisions about how you will live your life and then beguile you into thinking that it was all your choice.

"Compact discs are not superior to vinyl. E-readers are not superior to books. Lite beer is not the great leap forward. A society that replaces seven-tier wedding cakes with lo-fat cupcakes is a society that deserves to be put to the sword. But you can't fight City Hall. I also believe that everything that happens to you as you grow older makes it easier to die, because the world you once lived in, and presumably loved, is gone. As I have said before, when Keith Richards goes, I'm going too."

All in good time, I suppose. But remember this: until then, life is too short to watch Gupta TV.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus

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