The cover of a recent edition of Time magazine (August 17 2015), shows a guy with what seems like a pair of goggles on his face, in jeans and a golf shirt, jumping into the air against the backdrop of a beach scene. Except … the “goggles” are not “look-through”, like normal goggles; he is […]
Media
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Hungry for and in need of good news
A few years ago I would have argued that our media is quite balanced, we have a good dose of good news and a “good” dose of bad news. The only bad, I could also argue, was about the corruption and crime in the country. In my consumption of news I could see many firsts […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Media-ting the debate: What is the role of responsible media?
By Dylan Stewart The media plays a powerful role in driving public opinion, however media companies depend on the public’s readership for the income that will keep it in business. A responsible media needs to masterfully strike a fine balance to maintain its integrity and its consumer base. This is an article responding to the […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Phiyega explains ‘eat your heart out’ reference
Embattled police commissioner Riah Phiyega has come forward to explain the “eat your heart out” reference made in an SMS sent to DA MP Dianne Kohler-Barnard. Speaking via SMS, SA’s top cop said she heard the saying during a “Nigella show” and thought it would be applicable. She went on to explain the entire SMS […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
SA journalism: No agenda required
Newspaper editors aren’t much given to introspection. Whatever their political hue, they tend to have a virtually unshakeable belief that their particular interpretation of reality is the correct one. It of course makes for spectacular miscalculations, such as when Peter Bruce, then Financial Mail editor, in 1999 urged voters to support the fledgling United Democratic […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Media, News/Politics
Anger, ‘outrage’ and the internet
Quite often, when I log on to Twitter, I’ll see comments like the following: “What are we angry about today? Did I miss today’s Twitter outrage? I don’t know what we’re supposed to be angry about this week, but I’m outraged just in case.” It happens especially after incidents like Bic’s sexist Women’s Day ad […]
Posted inMedia
Bic, and why creativity matters
When the Bic Women’s Day outrage first hit the social media fan, I was driving back from the Tembe Elephant Park where my husband and I had spent our first anniversary. I am in Durban this week for the Loeries, so creativity is top of mind – which is relevant, because creativity is central to […]
Posted inGeneral, Media
Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift and American gun culture
A recent article on Yahoo addresses an interview with Miley Cyrus in which she expressed the view that she is often labelled a bad role model while, by contrast, the pop star with the squeaky clean image, Taylor Swift, is seen as the good role model. This divergence, she argued, hides double standards, more particularly […]
Posted inEquality, Media
Race is too much of a sloppy concept to assist us in answering the coloured question
The “coloured question” revived itself, again. This time, not by politicians hoping to gain sympathy votes from the coloured majority in the Western and Northern Cape provinces. Jamie Petersen, a 22-year-old Cape Town resident, writing about her experiences of “being coloured in a black and white South Africa” sparked this latest wave of the debate. […]
Posted inGeneral, Media
Movies and robots: society’s unconscious anxiety?
How much importance should one attach to recurrent cinematic themes involving humanity-destructive robots, which arguably represent what might be called society’s collective anxiety about technology gone seriously wrong? Cinema could perhaps be understood in Freudian terms as the collective dreams of society, which, not unlike ordinary dreams (sometimes nightmares), function as “wish-fulfilment”. Nightmares are also […]
Posted inEquality, Media
Caitlyn – our new Trans* icon?
By Chris/tine McLachlan As the world voyeuristically peeked at Mx Caitlyn Jenner splashed onto the cover page of Vanity Fair, I wondered: Is she the new poster girl/woman for the trans* community? This is the woman that was able to beat the president of the United States with the fastest growing Twitter account. The woman […]
Posted inMedia
African music should not be an event that comes once on South African radio
By Siphumelele Zondi I was listening to radio on Thursday and heard a feature called Urban Africa Thursday on a national radio station in South Africa. For thirty minutes they play music from the rest of the African continent and talk about African entertainment and travel. In the past, I have heard another radio station […]