The upside of an unfree press
Along with a few dozen other writers, the Mail & Guardian Online has invited me to blog for their new opinion section, called Thought Leader. Not sure about the leader bit, but I sure have a surfeit of thoughts. What follows is an extract from my first post, which went live last week during beta testing:
Like the charred oak of a toasted wine barrel, an acute struggle for liberty imparts rich vitality to an oppressed media. The all-enveloping mix of peace and violence, calm and trauma, relief and fear, elation and despair creates in reporters a sense of history, and of the role and responsibility they have in its unfolding.
During the last days of South Africa’s own fight for freedom, the then Weekly Mail and the ill-fated Vrye Weekblad were both famous for their fearless, fresh, and gritty reporting. At these papers, many a young reporter learnt the rigours of research, the importance of accuracy, the grave duty to be unbiased.
There are distinct echoes of these papers to be found in The Zimbabwean, a weekly newspaper aimed at the estimated 25% of that country’s citizens who live in exile. On sale in South Africa for just R4 an issue, it puts many of today’s South African newspapers to shame. …
Read the rest over here. Do comment, rate posts and browse around on the site. It’s a pretty cool evolution of the opinion/editorial page idea.
