On Thursday we celebrated World Press Freedom Day. Across the globe, people reflected on the crucial role a free and courageous press has played in safeguarding open, democratic societies. The day was spent highlighting the plight of journalists trying to do their jobs in repressive, authoritarian countries, many of whom are languishing in prison for daring to write truthfully about tyranny and corruption. Heartfelt tribute was paid to the hundreds of journalists killed on duty in recent years around the world.
Here in South Africa we have particular cause to celebrate a free press. Although they don’t get anywhere near their due share of the credit, much of our country’s victory against an unjust and racist regime is down to the men and women who exposed this regime. Few countries have seen such an extensive and sustained war on journalism as we have, and particularly in the last decade of the apartheid government. Draconian censorship laws, threats of closure and physical intimidation combined to make telling the truth near impossible for journalists and editors. Yet they did, and apartheid fell.
But when I say “we” celebrated World Press Freedom Day, I really mean a tiny handful of journalists, editors and related media types. Most South Africans didn’t know about it, and probably wouldn’t care all that much even if they did. Because a free press is something you rarely think about until it’s no longer there. And then you think about it all the time.
A free press also only remains free as long as it is protected from abuse, whether this is the physical kind as witnessed in countries like Turkey, China and Egypt, or the more insidious kind of abuse brought about by agenda-driven reporting. If you take your eye off the ball – if you start taking your independent press for granted – then it is the latter kind of abuse that seeps in through media ownership, funding and appointments, and ultimately destroys the notion of press freedom in a country. This is what is currently happening in South Africa, and it is a threat far greater than many care to acknowledge.
Much has been said recently about the fall of the Independent Media Group. If anyone still had doubts about the suitability of Iqbal Survé and his Sekunjalo Investment Holdings to run a newspaper stable the size and importance of Independent, then he has surely put those doubts to bed through his desperate efforts to defend the thoroughly discredited Sagarmatha Technologies across all his titles. Naming and shaming honourable journalists – likening them to apartheid Stratcom agents – simply because they dared to expose a scam public listing dishonestly propped up by state employee pension funds is a new low, even for Survé.
While most people ridiculed Survé and rolled their eyes at his transparent propaganda, what he has done to newspapers like The Cape Times, The Argus, The Star, Pretoria News and The Mercury deserves far greater condemnation. Between them, these papers have centuries of history and experience. They helped free our nation and usher in democracy; they shaped who we are. We’re not talking about some fly-by-night Gupta media organisation left to crash and burn after the looting’s done and the bosses have fled. We’re talking about the destruction of national treasures.