The press must be free, not dom

ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has appealed for calm when discussing the ANC’s proposed media tribunal and not go on the offensive.

On the contrary we all should, whether we are in and of the news media or not, forcefully resist this attempt to curtail freedom of speech.

Let’s be blunt. Whether it comes in the form of a media tribunal or the provisions of proposed protection of information laws, what we are talking about is censorship.

It is a matter of freedom of expression and the right of citizens to know.

We, the public, should not let the newspapers in particular collude in their own gradual castration.

As a journalist, I saw the effect of self-censorship often during the apartheid past and the way it hurts, not newspapers or journalists, but the rights of ordinary people.

I have a specific memory of how self-censorship operates. I think back to the sub-editors’ room of the Weekend World in 1976.
The World newspaper was owned by the liberal Argus printing group, ultimately owned by Anglo American Corporation. Working as a sub-editor, I had sent off for printing a page with an article detailing South Africa’s first military incursion into Angola. It was news to me and I thought the readers of the Weekend World might like to know about it.

I forget the exact process now, but a senior, white editor had to sign off all pages. He rushed in to the subs’ room and ordered me to replace the article immediately because it broke the law.

The Defence Act or some other piece of legislation demanded that all stories about the military had to be cleared by the SA National Defence Force before publication, and the SANDF had instructed that no news was to be published about the Angolan operation.

We were in effect keeping the news of South Africa’s illegal, undeclared war in Angola secret from the public, among them the fathers and mothers of the white conscripted soldiers who were being sent to fight in Angola alongside rebel forces. The senior journalist would have justified his action by reference to the consequences for the newspaper if the story appeared.

But his action was just part of a long-standing process of keeping the news media tame.

He was one of a cadre of conservative journalists who believed they were moral and professional, but whose co-operation with the authorities was wrapped up in their careers.

A knowledge of the plethora of regulations about what could be published and what could not was part of a journalist’s tool kit, and an expectation that these should be followed to the letter was part of the job.

As a young sub-editor I learned a hard lesson about the reality of press freedom in South Africa. The government eventually closed The World anyway when it stopped being so cautious. You cannot co-operate with tyranny in the hope of getting a little more freedom.

The example of the censoring of the story about the secret Angolan operation showed how you could work as a journalist on newspapers that ostensibly opposed apartheid but were heavily censored and yet live with a clear conscience.

The journalists at the Weekly Mail newspaper, formed nine years later, took another tack, which was to stretch the boundaries of obedience and thumb a nose at those same authorities.

Faced with the same situation they would have worked out a way to let the public know that they were being prevented from publishing something of importance.

Along with other “alternative” newspapers, they focused on publishing uncomfortable truths, challenging the apartheid authorities to enforce their censorship rather than rely on self-censorship.

There is a strong belief that had all the opposition, English-language newspaper groups stood firm at an early stage and rejected co-operation with the increasingly absurd demands about what could and what could not be printed, censorship would not have worked. The government would have been forced to back down, or taken steps so extreme it would have hurried along the fall of the regime.

The suspicion at the time was that those who complied actually found aspects of apartheid rather agreeable, and preferred mowing their perfect lawns to thinking about what was happening in the townships and certainly preferred not to upset the government.

So now what is it exactly that the ANC wants from the news media? Some agreement on a mechanism to stop the news media making the ANC uncomfortable in some areas in exchange for freedom-to-publish in other areas?

Let’s not be distracted by a couple of corrupt journalists who accepted pay for taking sides. If this is common, as is claimed, no regulation is going to prevent it. Competition among news media is the only protection, along with vigilance by editors who don’t want the very worth of their organisations’ reporting questioned.

Many journalists would rather say “okay, take your best shot” rather than collaborate again. Impose a media tribunal, if you like, and bear the national and international opprobrium. Don’t expect us to help you put censorship in place, or give it any legitimacy. Even those among us who are outraged by the conduct of some our colleagues will smother our disagreements for the sake of solidarity and defence of freedom.

A media tribunal will have an unintended effect. There is, in a sense, an information market, where restricting supply of real news increases its value. The news will come out, and when it does it will be more damaging than ever. If you want to dull the news down, make information freely available.

A story about cabinet ministers driving cars worth more than R1 million is sensational, but not half as sensational as when someone has tried to keep it a secret.

It is embarrassing to government because instinctively we know it is wrong for supposed servants of the people to indulge in opulence when many of those they are supposed to serve are desperately poor. And it does not matter whether such luxury is sanctified by government handbooks or by custom here or anywhere else in the world.

If it were not wrong, publishing it would not matter in the least, and those who did publish such stories would be laughed at. The way to stop damaging stories appearing in the news media is to stop supplying the material for it through actions that other people might think questionable, not to insist we all keep quiet about these things.

Censorship or self-censorship will also give some journalists, made lazy by the free flow of information, purpose once again. Others will be happy to toe the line.

Moreover, no censorship can target only one form of media: why should newspapers be especially regulated rather than books, websites, plays and other forms of mass communication?

What would happen if newspapers fell silent on certain issues is that other media would be opened up. Desktop publishing, a novelty in the 1980s, allowed the alternative news media to flourish. Other technology will do the same thing now, whether it is the internet or cellphones.

The implication is that censorship cannot work without curbing the freedom of speech of the individual. If the government is determined to go down this path, the real loser will be the ordinary citizen, whose right to know will be curtailed on the one hand, and whose right to speak freely limited on the other.