News for sale: DA Provincial Government declines SABC offer to buy ‘news' coverage

The Democratic Alliance's (DA) Provincial Government in the Western Cape was recently made a most astounding offer by the public broadcaster, the SABC: the opportunity to receive television coverage, as supposed hard news on our governance of the province, for the small price of just under a quarter of a million Rand. R217 756, 85 to be exact.

The offer was for the province we govern to be a featured segment on the SABC's current affairs flagship programme, Interface, as part of the SABC News and Current Affairs Department's plans to focus on economic and social development in different provinces as part of a post World-Cup round-up. Interface is billed as serious hard news that, in theory, is supposed to contribute to the tone of the political debate in the country by ostensibly objectively analysing and interrogating current affairs in the national interest.

The DA has in its possession documents that demonstrate precisely the ANC's government's approach to ‘developmental journalism,' its own term, which seems to be nothing more than a euphemism for buying and selling news content. A link to those documents follows below. It includes requests for the Western Cape Provincial government to pay for such utilities as toilet hire and scaffolding. These are all astounding demands.

We should also be aware that if this offer has been made to the Western Cape government, it has no doubt been made to other provincial governments as well. We can only wonder just how far the rot extends of paying for news in South Africa.  This naturally leads to the question of whether there is an extended history of such mutually beneficial relationships between successive ANC governments nationally and the SABC.

Sadly for the South African public, the SABC has a long way to go before it can even begin to talk about ethical and objective journalism as the myriad ethical quandaries raised by this incident clearly demonstrate.

The first thing we should ask ourselves is simply this: how can a public broadcaster, which relies on public funds allocated to it, reasonably be expected to fulfil its mandate of generating meaningful and objective news analysis away from external influences if its fundamental safeguard can simply be circumvented with enough money? What then is the point of a public broadcaster?

In fact, the entire purpose of having a public broadcaster, as emulating international models, is that it is supposed to avoid the alleged pitfalls that could supposedly be associated with commercial journalism, ostensibly elevating the SABC above profit-motive concerns.

Whether one accepts that hypothesis is debatable. However, it goes without saying that those who manage the SABC, especially its News and Current Affairs divisions, accept the premise of that principle. As such, how then does the SABC reconcile this with their actions?

Perhaps the issue really is one of finances, with principles and codes of conduct becoming mere accessories during difficult times. South Africans have, unfortunately, been exposed to a long saga of mismanagement of both the administration and the finances of the public broadcaster for some time. Indeed, it was not so long ago that the SABC was receiving hundreds of millions of Rands in government bail-outs. It later emerged that despite these fiscal woes, the broadcaster saw fit to spend approximately R3 million on World Cup tickets for employees.

Indeed, in his meeting to pitch the ‘news' show with the Strategic Director of Communications for the Western Cape Provincial Government, Nick Clelland-Stokes, Mzukisi Twala of the SABC, intimated, in a jesting manner betraying the desperate seriousness of his words, that the SABC had to charge because of its financial problems.

What then happens to all of the money the SABC receives from South Africans paying for their TV licences? We are always implored that this is ‘the right thing to do' and that it enables the SABC to fund its delivery of content, including News programming, one of its principal functions.

It is this model that supposedly allows South Africans some reassurance of the 'objectivity' of the broadcaster. We understand, however, that this money is not always enough and that other revenue in the form of commercial advertising is needed in order to sustain operations.

However, that additional commercial funding is only for slots designated as advertising space, not for space masquerading as objective coverage of South African affairs presented with all the hoopla that the SABC news team can muster.

We find it irresponsible and disappointing that the SABC seem to be willing to deliberately engage in deceiving the South African public in the presentation of supposed news content.

Given that this case has arisen in the midst of a national debate about the direction of media in this country, it is interesting to note that much has been made of the SABC by the ANC, specifically that the print media should be regulated more stringently, in line with the broadcast media. Is this then the vision the ANC has for journalism standards in our country, whereby the only media outlet it controls is willing to sell news coverage to those who are willing to pay?

The ANC government's vision of the media is one that supposedly reflects the goals and priorities of the nation as a whole. This incident is a chilling insight into how that vision works in practice: branches of government using public money to buy ‘objective' news coverage from another branch of government already funded by the public.

Sadly, this is a chilling and uncanny reminder of the days when we had a state broadcaster in this country, not a public one: an entire media apparatus whose job it was to manufacture positive news coverage for the apartheid regime as an attempt at manufacturing consent by a wilful distortion of the news.

As the DA provincial government told the SABC, and in keeping with the provincial government's moratorium on paying for advertising, we shall have no part of it. We are a party of government indeed but one based on a new governance model for South Africa, where the praise we receive shall be deservedly earned, not cheaply bought.

Statement issued by Niekie van den Berg, MP, Democratic Alliance shadow minister of communications, August 31 2010

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