Sunday Times: Could it be the real 'Train o' Hope'?

It’s been a dismal December so far for our news media, hasn’t it?

The paucity of strong local news stories has been reflected in generally pedestrian media content, presentation, insight and originality. The movie circuit has been pretty similar.

The most riveting regional news reports we’ve had have been the spread of cholera, rather half-hearted mudslinging and name-calling, a few sackings, the “R” words, and the trusty standby — Bob “How Long Will Africa Let Him Get Away With It” Mugabe.

Don’t get me wrong. These are important stories and our media would be at fault to neglect them. But that’s the way the press pickle squirts — the past fortnight has been a bad news time. And none of the media have shown much spunk in getting the edge on anyone else.

It’s especially noticeable having come on the heels of such galvanising stuff as the formation of Cope (I still think it is a silly Pythonesque attempt at a catchy acronym), and the dismembering of the once almighty ANC (yippee-kiyay-mother), Barack storming the White House, the first survivor of the as-yet-unidentified arenavirus and various important court cases. All big stuff; something new every day. So the past fortnight has been somewhat post-coital and he still doesn’t realise she faked it.

We’re also battle-fatigued from the deepening recession. There have been an estimated 13 000 jobs lost and even the tantalising titbits Tito’s tossed out haven’t done much to lift our spirits, have they?

So, against that kind of backdrop — and without any serious sporting hoopla to distract us from the blackness of this “festive season” — it is hardly surprising our media up here in the Big Naartjie have mirrored the news malaise in their lacklustre presentation of the news.

Front pages, both above and below the fold, have been singularly unimpressive. Where one could normally rely on the Star to give a good pictorial splash supported by some incisive reporting, the best we got was the Ewert suicide which, while tragic and graphic, was hardly stop-the-presses stuff. Beeld has been equally bland.

The Daily Sun has been quite palatable in terms of the normal sewage it contains, though it does offer media watchers like me a chance to play count-the-cockups. Last Tuesday clocked in a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not edition with 97 glaringly gorgeous gaffes in the first three pages.

Business Day and the Times have been treading water — and showing it. Were it not for BD‘s regular columnists there would be no reason to spend more than 15 minutes on it. To its credit, the Times‘ efforts to make the world around us more interesting merit applause. Pictorially they beat the pants off eNews and the SABC (all channels) combined and their snippets from here, there and everywhere are enlightening. Oh, yes, and the spot-the-difference insert seems to have gained a popularity far beyond the shoddy printing that characterises that page.

The Citizen‘s new website is one of the best on that front. It is uncluttered, pithy, up-to-date and sustains the morning edition’s impetus well. It’s to be welcomed because the hard copy is quite a drab flip-through — without Sapa’s input it would probably be a fifth of its current size.

Local radio hasn’t shown much gumption and 702’s news department can do with a serious shake-up in terms of accuracy and comprehensible English. Bruce Whitfield continues to broadcast the very best business show in the country — bar none!

The other local stations have been their usual pre-Xmas yuletide bonhomie and from a news perspective have merely trod the path of any earlier bulletin.

As for television, now that the champagne of its launch has lost its fizz, eNews Channel’s claim to being “prime time all the time” has faded markedly. Tune in for 15 minutes at 7am and again at about 4pm and you will have covered all the news you need. Or just grab the first 30 minutes at 7pm and it’s like watching Springbok Radio with pictures. Nuff said — lest the dogs of law be let slip again.

As for Auntie SABC — the less said the better. Uninspiring, pedestrian, boring and superficial, though here and there are isolated embryonic signs that maybe, just maybe, there might be preparations for some better TV to come, but whether that will percolate through Auckland Park’s entire megalithic tectonic plate will be worth watching.

Even the normally highly watchable Carte Blanche gave us reruns and hearty slaps all round.

As for the weeklies … generally blah. A few morsels here and there, but mostly tucked away inside. The Weekender and Sunday Independent have their own games of Find-The-Good-One-This-Week and scrapings up front. The most recent edition of Mail&Guardian was one of the ugliest and messiest front pages in years. To its ever-stylish website that looks as suave and debonair as Patrick Macnee in the original 1960s The Avengers, Friday’s front page was as garish as a Carmen Miranda fruitbowl headdress.

We all thought the silly season had arrived two weeks prem. Then into this insipid and mediocre media arena strode yesterday’s Sunday Times.

Again it wasn’t to my mind so much Megan Power’s scoop on our prez’s bad housekeeping skills, as it was the entire op-ed page 21. Like Muhammad Ali in his prime, the Sunday Times flung off its sparkling marketing mantle and revealed the most courageous, profound and uncompromisingly honest story of the month — the results of a study it commissioned in September into why it had been making so many mistakes and why its standards had been dropping so radically.

Few media do this at all, and those that do sneak off to secret bosberade so there are no necks on the block. Instead of mass debate, it’s more masturbate. And the readers, listeners or viewers have no yardstick by which to measure change. To be honest, there usually isn’t much anyway.

Not the ST. Not this time. And the implications could be profound.

Nor did SA’s biggest newspaper choose the usual docile bunch of researchers — as Johnnic had done back in 2007. It gave four of the toughest and keenest heavyweights in the media ring — Paula Fray, Anton Harber, Franz Kruger and Dario Milo — free rein.

The results of their work were not the customary closed-door PowerPoint presentations either. Yesterday the ST printed their findings; summarised, but substantially in all their raw and scything candour for us, the readers, to judge. Then editor Mondli Makanya made some of the boldest promises I’ve read in decades.

Any media company, print, radio, TV or electronic, that does not sit up and take note of this watershed investment in responsible journalism, does not deserve to be around much longer. And, mark my words, nor will they be.

True to its fundamental ethos, for the first time, a news medium — a Sunday newspaper — said when, where, why, who fucked up, what and how. It held itself firmly and openly responsible and accountable. No excuses. No cover-ups. No little yes-buts here or there. No if-only-we-hads.

Then it said precisely what it was going to do to fix itself. Not only is that kind of honesty and transparency in the media scarcer than teddy bear turds, but, most importantly, the Sunday Times also said who would judge how well it was doing. That would be us, its readers, you and me.

Not since Associated Press conducted its landmark “Deep Structure” ethnographic survey has so important a step been taken in journalism. In my estimation as an insider critic it ranks alongside the launch of CNN and al-Jazeera.

It vindicates the open-dialogue, no-holds-barred, in-your-face, into-the-core, self-critical approach to accountable, responsible and constructive journalism that has been championed by the Freedom of Expression Institute and lately by the SA National Editors’ Forum. And, if I may be so arrogant as to say, the attitude and credo for which I became the first blogger to be fired for openly criticising his employer — the ST‘s sister paper, Sowetan, last year.

The extreme frustrations that pushed me to blow the whistle on Sowetan‘s shortcomings and bring the debate into the open, should never have existed. The fact that restrictive and dictatorial father/mother-knows-best environments still exist today is a shame on them. They have no place in the 21st century news world. Quick to hold anything from drinking habits of judges to corrupt cops to crappy movies up to public scrutiny, the media are hypocritically insular if not downright deceitful about their own shortcomings. And, boy oh boy, are they plentiful! They’re also in the public interest because they directly impact on issues of credibility and ethical behaviour.

If the Sunday Times, Mondli, Ray and their respective teams can pull this revolution off, journalism in SA will never be the same again. And coinciding with the publication by Sanef of the groundbreaking The Extraordinary Editor — A Handbook for South African Media Leaders, edited by Guy Berger and Elizabeth Barratt, neither will the way news organisations run themselves.

Not only should this be the liberating and transforming paradigm for the media, but they will simultaneously hold a laser beam up to every company, every government department, every NGO, every law firm, every university, every school, every parastatal, every sports team on how “it should be done”.

Hang on to your hats, everybody! There really is light at the end of the tunnel — and it’s not a runaway express either! As Josh White might have said: “It’s that long-time a’comin’ train o’ hope”.