Fighting Nero in the newsrooms

I am a wimp, but I love being interrogated. Not the fingernail-ripping, electric-mattress kind of interrogation, nor am I into squash balls in the mouth, handcuffs and nurses with whips.

I love having my views and opinions dissected, questioned, probed and looked at from different viewpoints.

Somehow the process, which is actually quite taxing, helps me consolidate and package my thoughts more succinctly and communicate them more meaningfully that I am able to do on my own. Sometimes, I even change my mind … woorr, hey!

I have always held in great awe the philosophers, theologians, theorists and scientists who have been able to achieve such crystal clarity of thought and depth of insight in isolation. Not to mention the monks and ascetics who have achieved the zenith of compassion and contentment in absolute isolation.

On Friday, I was interviewed for the better part of an hour for an upcoming investigation by Special Assignment. The topic, as you might guess, was freedom of expression and the role of criticism in shaping a social structure in which everyone can feel valued and valuable.

Jessica Pitchford allowed me to ramble — a rare privilege, as rambling is a tendency that more than 20 years of Toastmastering has yet to expunge from me.

With each passing day and on unexpected levels I am gobsmacked by the absolute nettle-rash aversion most people have to criticism. Everything is so fucking personal; no wonder we stand accused of being a nation of anal-retentive cowards. My philosophy has always been that a sure way to prevent your head getting irretrievably jammed up your own arsehole is to wind your neck in regularly.

Criticism has that effect. OK, not on the government, but that is because it is GD (genetically defective).

In my view, this pathological paranoia about criticism is as big a threat to media integrity and progress as is a combination of all the external menaces — erosion of the Constitution, interdicts, litigation, the threat of a media tribunal, physical threats (of which I know quite enough, thank you), censorship, the lack of skills, deteriorating standards and latent political pandering.

The most effective counter to criticism is obdurate stoic silence. Think of your own domestic tiffs and lovers’ quarrels … the Stonewall Jackson treatment wins silence, but is the most infuriating, debilitating and ultimately negative response! You may win the war, but the battle will continue raging elsewhere.

The other counter is offence. See every criticism as a personal affront, listen but hear nothing and launch nothing short of Operation Overkill in response. The intention is primal — show who is the boss, that you will brook no disobedience and mischief and that it is clearly your way or the highway.

South Africa has a third favoured response: agree with every thing the critic says, let her or him exhaust their energies, assure them their views and suggestions are not only valid, but also valuable and will be considered … and then do as you intended all along, sweet Fanny Adams. This is the sacred ground of all call centres and a growing disease in newsrooms.

I have experienced all three responses at the Sowetan and they probably explain this once-great newspaper’s continued slide towards becoming a museum piece — as testing February’s editions against a battery of standard journalistic norms would indicate. As with any ancient artefact, it’s just a matter of time.

Are we journalists then surprised that the übermensch of the kakistocracy, its tentacles of administration locked in the dreaded “death grip”; the other three estates of society; and even the public besiege the media on every front?

There are too many editors and senior media people who turn a pompous (or incompetent) blind eye to the enormous investment of trust, credibility and faith in their respective media. It’s not the paltry R3 (and sometimes much higher amounts) the publication or broadcast costs. It is the fact that people actually believe the content and base decisions on it.

And when the standards of that content are allowed to decay as badly as those of, say, the Daily Sun, Sowetan, Sunday World or numerous SABC reports — or even Sapa, News24 and IOL, not to mention the massed armies of magazines — something is rotting in the fourth estate.

We bemoan the onslaught against freedom of speech and expression; the right to hold the government, political parties, organs of the state, public figures, public bodies and companies to account; the too numerous limitations on the media behind which crooks and scoundrels and scallywags can hide and do the Snuki “Sorry Boss” shuffle the moment a big advertiser threatens to take its money to those dark corners where scruples are scarcer than ANC integrity.

This is why criticism is as vital as the air we breathe — and why it must start at home.

Monday’s Star carried a story by Wendy Jasson da Costa headlined “Manuel’s gag attempt raises censorship fears” around Trevor “Tips” Manuel’s urgent court application to stop economist Terry Crawford-Browne from making any more allegations about Tips’s role in the arms scandal. The article quotes the Freedom of Expression Institute’s Na’eem Jeenah (also a Thought Leader blogger): “Pre-publication censorship is something we should not tolerate.” Hear, bloody hear!

Because the media are generally hyper-allergic to criticism, they stifle it internally. Or they give it euphemistic PC names such as “feedback”, “research”, “climate surveys” or other asinine labels that make it easier to file away in some bottom drawer where it can never be seen.

This breeds the kind of secrecy expressed in the hackneyed and meaningless idiom of not airing your dirty laundry in public. Airing laundry in public is what the media do, for heaven’s sake, and if you lack the courage and integrity to do so at home, you abdicate the right to do so towards any other grouping.

The print media trample each other to pulp in their primal stampede to pillory the public broadcaster at every opportunity, but they readily fire people who dare criticise them outside the barbed-wire confines of their own closed-door conference rooms lined with codes of conduct and charters and other hypocritical hoodoo charms — fire them or threaten them or make life so unpleasant that critics are forced to resign.

The truly amazing thing is that it is precisely those people who should be applauded and promoted to higher office. Instead, the media — especially the South African media today — choose the invertebrates and sycophants who don’t know how to rock a rubber-ducky in a bath, let alone the corporate boat of ordinariness, and promote them to their level of incompetence. We, the media, adore with Pygmalionic ardour the Peter Principle.

Coming back to Toastmasters. This is still the world’s biggest and most successful adult educational organisation with millions of past and present members — and success, growth and development are premised almost exclusively on criticism. Not only are you taught to take criticism (even the dull and ignorant, for they too have their turn), but you are taught responsible, constructive, sensitive criticism yourself. Many people have left Toastmasters because of bad critiques, but thousands of times have remained because of good ones — stayed and grown immeasurably.

As we debate the centuries-overdue “Bill of Responsibilities” and its potential to rescue South Africa from the self-created quicksand of rights-blindness, it is vital that the media take a much deeper, much more honest and completely open examination of their stance on freedom of expression — as a professional responsibility and moral obligation, not merely a sacrosanct right.

That way, we may be able to extract our heads from the depths of our own chocolate starfish.