There was a bit of an outcry over a lawsuit brought by Gold Reef City against the television show Carte Blanche. It is certainly a large suit, amounting to some R47 million, but contrary to some views, this is not a threat to freedom of the press. On the contrary. If people did not have legal recourse against the media, the ANC would be justified in calling for a Media Appeals Tribunal. Read on, at The Daily Maverick.

There are serious kinds of political activism, and there are less serious ones. And then there are those that don’t take any effort, and don’t make one jot of difference. Online petitions, such as this one which appears to express concern about media freedom, are among the latter. So I signed it. Sort of. Read on at ITWeb.

While everyone is saying all the right things, and making all the right arguments, they’re losing the battle on media freedom. As long as the ANC’s base remains unconvinced, it will side with the ANC, and the ANC will claim a legitimate mandate to push through draconian laws that will, in effect if not in intent, stifle a free media.

Read my Daily Maverick column on the subject here: Why the media will lose this battle.

South Africa’s Freedom Day is just past, and World Press Freedom Day is just around the corner. An opportune time, then, to highlight some troubling developments on the continent in The darkness of Africa. Governments are naturally at odds with a free press, but their attempts to control it are a danger to liberty and prosperity.

• This column was first published in ITWeb Brainstorm magazine, February 2008. This is how I earn my monthly ration of beer and cigarettes, dog and cat food, fuel and bread. Subscribing not only gets you these columns on time, but goes some way towards sustaining this starving blogger in health and happiness.

Squelching to court through a quagmire

In the heavily prescriptive television industry, one has to admire the effort the regulator, ICASA, puts into its work. It can’t be easy. But one sometimes wonders: why, why, why, oh why?

Several recent developments in the broadcasting sector are worthy of attention, even if each serves only to exposes a fundamental failing in our telecommunications law.

Three that caught my attention in the last couple of months are the ruling ANC’s call for the SABC (the public broadcaster) to be more tax-funded and less advertising-driven, the suit Black Entertainment Television (BET) is bringing against ICASA over its award of five pay-television licences (it didn’t get one), and the demand by the SABC that pay-TV operators pay it for content they are required to carry (they don’t want to).

The ANC is quite right. One of the most damaging aspects of the SABC’s historical dominance of the broadcasting space is its reliance on advertising for funding.

A public broadcaster, if such a thing is necessary in the first place, should have a specific public service mandate and should be funded by public money. TV licences are a regressive, clumsy and expensive method of generating insufficient revenue. By selling advertising, the SABC, though it is a state-owned institution, sucks a large proportion of potential revenue out of the market, which could sustain competing broadcasters. Diverting available spending to the state is an implicit threat to media freedom, media diversity, media quality and media specialisation.

So I’m right behind the ANC’s proposal, with one caveat. The knee-jerk reaction has been that this will threaten press freedom. I can’t really see how the SABC can be more beholden to the state than it already is. I mean, with extended live coverage of ruling-party birthday parties it is, frankly speaking, kissing arse. Besides, being beholden to advertisers raises the same problems. The solution is to create an inviolable layer of structural separation between editorial and owners (in this case, the state). The SABC should be answerable to an independent, disinterested editorial board appointed by Parliament, rather than being controlled by politically-appointed directors. Only then can its public service begin to be distinguished from government service or ruling party service.

BET is also quite right. Television licences (and, for that matter, any other licence) should not be limited according to some bureaucrat’s notion of what the market can bear. They have no way of knowing how big the market might be and have no motive to take the necessary risks. They can only make and implement their one guess, however educated, rather than letting many competing guesses duke it out. They’ll always underestimate market size (witness cellular licences) or over-estimate it (witness E.sat’s decision to provide content to Multichoice, rather than use its licence, citing lack of space in the market).

Markets are created when risk-taking investors spot gaps and exploit them. Competition is created when those investors can price products as they see fit. Cost-reduction happens when competitors consolidate their interests, and winners buy up losers.
Instead, we get cosy cartels, who are held to arbitrary pricing restrictions, such as that they must generate at least as much revenue from subscriptions as from advertising. What do they do in a good advertising month? Go to customers and say, “Sorry folks, but we’re making a fortune here, we’ll have to raise your rates”? For that matter, why should there be any legal distinction between how broadcasters earn their revenue? Surely that should be a strategic business decision, not a legal prescription?

Unlike the ANC and BET, the SABC is quite wrong. If pay-TV operators have to pay for their SABC content, they should have the choice whether or not to buy it. If they’re obliged by law to carry public service content, it is unjust to expect them to pay over and above the cost of distribution. This is sheer opportunism on the part of the SABC, which is one of the dangers of that curious, cancerous state-capitalist hybrid that is the profit-driven state-owned enterprise.

Solving these problems go to the root of our telecoms legislation. They require setting licence conditions, but not limiting the number in issue. They require that risk-taking investors themselves choose their business plans and pricing models, rather than having them imposed by the state. They require regulation that is purely administrative, rather than restrictive, prescriptive and protective.

Because all this complicated lawyering and regulatory rigmarole, designed to balance the interests of producers, broadcasters and the state, forgets the most important interest: that of the public.

Since I’m laid up in bed with a rather annoying flu that managed to switch off both body and mind, I figured I’d pass the time and break the silence with links to the half-dozen most popular posts on my blog, as per Google Analytics. They represent a gratifying mix of subjects, ranging from the environment to economic theory, from social networks to media freedom, from silly bureaucrats to great press photographs. In order of popularity:

1. 10 reasons to reject global warming — A summary of why I can’t accept the orthodox view that global warming is a crisis that requires large-scale government intervention. This item has not only been the most popular, despite being published only three weeks ago, but it recorded a surprisingly high average of 24 minutes spent on the page. It was a follow-up to a column published in Maverick magazine, entitled Global warming is a hoax. In some ways, the second attempt turned out to be the column I had actually set out to write.
2. Child labour: the baby dragon — This was a response to a question asked in the comments to an earlier post, which simply argued that import restrictions on Chinese goods, while protecting narrow interests, are not in the broad interests of South African consumers. “But what about child labour?” came the question. My response, namely that the description of such practices is an over-generalisation, that blanket condemnation is simplistic, and that either way, our objection can better be expressed in individual, targeted, specific boycotts rather than state-enforced punishment against an entire foreign country at the cost of local consumers, prompted a fair bit of outrage. As it would, when you see things only in black-and-white, and when every problem only has one, statist, solution.
3. This is a poke-free zone — Despite deriving some benefits from Facebook, the popular social network that attracted hundreds of thousands of South Africans in the space of just a few months, the signal-to-noise ratio had been declining, and I vowed to leave for good the day Microsoft got involved. It did. I left.
4. Info Scandal II — A cautionary tale about what happens when politicians and civil servants own media interests and try to buy out a major newspaper critical of the government. A follow-up post noted a significant difference, pointed out by Anton Harber, between the proposed buyout of Johnnic Communications (soon to be called Avusa) and the original Info Scandal of 1978.
5. The candyman can’t — Who needs to invent jokes when politically-correct bureaucrats will hand them to you on custom-printed signs?
6. The life and death of Kevin Carter — An old article about the late Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer stirred recollections of the years of South Africa’s transition to democracy. It occurred to me that many of my memories from that time aren’t memories at all. They’re Kevin Carter’s photographs.

Of these, my own favourite is the Kevin Carter piece. Like the item on William F. Deedes and the post on Isambard Kingdom Brunel (and the follow-up column it sparked), they reflect the pleasure I take in history and the great people that populate it.

“Spot the difference”, I wrote above portraits of B.J. Vorster and Thabo Mbeki, in a post describing the bid for Sunday Times owner Johncom as reminiscent of the Info Scandal of 1978. Anton Harber, former political editor at the Rand Daily Mail, former Mail & Guardian editor and current professor of journalism at Wits University, says there is a difference:

In the Info Scandal, government money was secretly channeled to a sympathetic businessman, Louis Luyt, to try and buy the Rand Daily Mail, then a leading government critic, and when this failed, to launch The Citizen newspaper. The scandal lay in the secrecy, and the abuse of state resources to try and take out a vocal opponent of government.

This time around, it appears to be an open bid by a group of individuals who are entitled to do it in their personal capacities. What is unusual, however, is that a number of them are government officials, in key places such as the presidency and foreign affairs, and senior ruling party members. It seems they seek funding from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), but this is what the PIC does it and as long as it gives them no special treatment, and makes a decision on solid business grounds, I cannot see grounds for complaint at this technical level.

Fair comment. Harber remains concerned, however, calling it a “very worrying development”. He notes some of the dangers, concluding:

Interestingly, ANC media policy currently highlights the need for greater diversity in our media, and no doubt some of them will argue that government needs a louder voice in the media and this is adding to the diversity. But they are wrong - media diversity should serve to give voice to the voiceless, those most distant from wealth and power, and not those who hold and wield the enormous authority of the state.

A few days ago, I expressed concern about the impliations of Tokyo Sexwale, a presidential candidate, owning the Sunday Times. This pales into insignificance against the prospect of members of the Sunday Times board actually sitting in government offices, like the Afrikaans media of the apartheid era.

Some will argue that this is just a transaction by some individual exercising their rights in a free market. Well, it is more than that and it has consequences and implications we cannot ignore. If these individuals want to show that they are not doing it as party officials, they should resign from government and party so that they are not conflicted between their political obligations and their business/editorial ones.

Spot the difference:

It’s a peaceful and sunny Sunday morning, and the Sunday Times is once again the bringer of what a friend calls “an explosive cover story”. Written by Buddy Naidu and Simpiwe Piliso, here’s the headline: Mbeki men in R7bn bid to own Sunday Times.

I was but a child when the Rand Daily Mail broke the news in November 1978 that The Citizen, founded two years earlier by publisher Louis Luyt, cabinet minister Connie Mulder and secretary of information Eschel Rhoodie, had been established and secretly funded by the National Party government under state president B.J. Vorster. Previously, Luyt had tried to acquire shares in South African Amalgamated Newspapers. [Update: I should point out that SAAN was the publisher of the famous Rand Daily Mail, which was at the time highly critical of the apartheid regime.]

Now, it appears Ronnie Mamoepa, the spokesperson in the department of foreign affairs — a similar role to that played by Rhoodie in the 1970s — with Titus Mafolo, a political adviser to Thabo Mbeki, and Billy Modise, former chief of state protocol, who together with delightfully-named businessman Groovin Nchabeleng own a company named Koni Media Holdings, are attempting to take over Johnnic Communications. Johncom is the publisher of several major media titles that have been vocal critics of the government and have in turn been singled out for tongue-lashings by Mbeki, assorted state officials and the public broadcaster. They include the Sunday Times, the Sowetan, and half of the Financial Mail and Business Day. Mamoepa and company have applied for funding from among others the state-owned Public Investment Corporation.

Thabo Mbeki on Friday laid into the media, saying that the government was not attempting to stifle press freedom.

“A few of these have even attempted to make comparisons with the repugnant apartheid government, which in 1977 banned a number of publications, including the World and the Weekend World,” Mbeki reportedly said.

How hollow his denial rings today. What the repugnant apartheid government also did in 1977 was publish The Citizen, denying all the while that it was funded by government money, that it exercised editorial control, or that it was engaged in a National Party propaganda and misinformation campaign. The affair led to the resignation of the state president, B.J. Vorster.

One ANC member of parliament has already spoken out against the deal. Kader Asmal is quoted as saying it is “astonishing that civil servants are able to develop time and energy for what is really a takeover bid”. He argues that at issue is the danger of control of newspapers by politically active people. Perhaps he should consider tabling a bill in parliament preventing civil servants or “politically active people” from owning interests in media companies. That goes for the stake Tokyo “Berlusconi” Sexwale’s company, Mvelaphanda, is acquiring in Johncom too.

I’ve written before about the worrying similarities between the socio-economic policies of this government and the apartheid regime — both practicing a form of national socialism or state corporatism. In this essentially political affair, the parallels with the first Info Scandal are even more uncanny. They are frightening. Who, for example, will be playing the role of P.W. Botha, who stepped into the power vacuum left after Vorster’s resignation?

Update: Anton Harber points out one difference.

The threat from Essop Pahad, the “minister in the presidency” of South Africa, to withdraw advertising from the Sunday Times over the paper’s coverage of the theft conviction, alleged drunken misbehaviour, and abuse of power by Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the health minister, is “dangerous, dangerous, dangerous”.

So says Anton Harber, the go-to man at Wits University for all matters journalism, in a column that sets out clearly why such a threat — which appears not to be empty rhetoric — would constitute “bad governance, an abuse of public trust and perhaps even corruption”.

They should be slapped down as fast as anyone else actively promoting the abuse of the state coffers in pursuit of their political agendas.

Other publishers and media owners might be tempted to rub their hands with glee at the prospect of this approximately R150-million being dispersed among the Time’s rival publications. If they do, they will be displaying an extraordinary shortsightedness.

To allow the government to use their expenditure to punish those they disapproved of and reward those they like would be to had them a powerful weapon to use against their critics. This month it may be the Sunday Times, but if it proves effective then you can be sure that it will be used against others. It means that publishers and broadcasters will have to think twice every time you do something which might find disfavour with the presidency, such as questioning the use of beetroot rather than antiretrovirals, or pointing to the poor conditions in your local hospital’s maternity wards.

It would be a matter of time before such a weapon was used against those who did no more than give favourable coverage to the wrong faction of the ruling party.

Well said. The threats to media freedom are mounting. President Thabo Mbeki regularly uses his bully pulpit to castigate what he believes to be irresponsible, inaccurate or unpatriotic reporting, usually in response to criticism of the policies of the ruling party, or the actions of the executive. Like anyone else, he’s entitled to his opinions, but a president should use his status and power judiciously. When a head of government publicly denunciates the very institutions that exist to protect the people from their government, this has a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

When that same government threatens to use the prodigious power of public money against the media, this too has a chilling effect on press freedom. Not to mention that it’s your and my money, taken from us by legal force with the promise to use it for the benefit, not to the detriment, of the people.

Thomas Jefferson put it this way: “I think it as honorable to the government neither to know nor notice its sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter.”

That’s exactly what the ANC government is doing.

But they’re lying, the politicians might (and do) say. Again, Jefferson, who himself suffered greatly, both personally and as president, from the very press whose freedom he defended, responds: “The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.”

A free press can be good or bad, but without freedom it can only be bad.

You know, you’d think that the news director of the country’s public broadcaster would bristle at accusations that he’s just a government spin doctor. That he’d protest that yes, he used to be the communications man for a government department, but what journalist hasn’t stooped to PR to pay the rent on occasion, and anyway, you can’t assume someone would have any obligations to past employers.

Not Snuki Zikalala. He revels in it. The Times has the story: No news is good news, says Comrade Snuki.

The SABC would not have broadcast stories about Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s behaviour during her hospital treatment, or on her conviction for theft for stealing a watch from an unconscious patient — because the public broadcaster only carries stories that aid the country’s development.

“We are guided by the constitution not to incite violence or hatred in our reporting, said Snuki Zikalala, the SABC’s chief of news yesterday.

“Publishing such a story is disrespectful.”

You know, all this wouldn’t be such a problem, if people could realistically be expected to ignore it, and switch to a more wholesome news station. If the SABC wasn’t the dominant player in a small government-protected cartel. Market forces don’t act very robustly when the government only permits a single free-to-air licence holder to compete with the SABC. When the owners of any device that can receive TV signals must pay mandatory TV licence fees which go to the SABC. When new competition cannot arise without an invitation from the Minister of Communications, and then is likely to be required by law to charge fees from their viewers, or even agree in their licence conditions not to carry news at all.

I suppose people could switch to non-TV media. But is this a realistic expectation? The fact is that there’s no robust competition against the SABC in the huge middle- and lower-income demographic, so the government’s propaganda outlet is virtually guaranteed to find a huge audience. And while their income might be lower, their votes count just the same.

(Hat tip: Sarah Britten, who recently started a Facebook group on the subject of media freedom in South Africa.)

“The press is a machine, it doesn’t have any freedom. Freedom belongs to the people, they have a right to make choices.” — Dali Mpofu, CEO of the state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation, quoted in the Mail & Guardian.

More funnies in the same story, from Snuki Zikalala i’Afrika, the government spin-doctor turned SABC news director who has undisclosed information on the dipso klepto health minister that differs from everyone else’s, and Ronald Suresh Roberts, the presidential hagiographer who thinks journalists harbour subversive fantasies involving baked beans and trespassing on the body of said minister.

Today, news broke that Mondli Makhanya, the editor of the country’s biggest Sunday paper, the Sunday Times, and its deputy managing editor, Jocelyn Maker, are to be arrested to face charges over the provenance of source material used in a recent article alleging that health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is a thief and a drunk.

In response, Justice Malala, one of the country’s most respected journalists, a columnist, political analyst and former newspaper editor, wrote a column that inspires tears for the beloved country.

I am angry and I am afraid. I am deeply afraid for my country.

The sound of silence has fallen over our country while the government of President Thabo Mbeki, in its anger and its shame over its numerous failures and acts of deceit, uses state security apparatus to go after every man and woman who dares to speak truth to power.

… The question has to be asked: is this the South Africa of Nelson Mandela and Albert Luthuli? Did the heroes of June 1976 and the veterans of the fires of the ’80s lose out on schooling and normal lives to be in a country where journalists are prosecuted as happened under apartheid?

The Mbeki regime has been an unmitigated disaster from the onset.

But ineptitude — ranging from the failure to deal with HIV/Aids and rampant crime to consorting with criminals such as Robert Mugabe — is different from pure, unadulterated corruption such as we see unfolding today in the Pikoli saga and now the persecution of Makhanya and Maker.

These are steps into the worlds of Mobutu Sese Seko and Mugabe. Only 13 years into our democracy, Mbeki’s Stalinist learnings are fully on show: journalists and editors arrested and jailed; opponents jailed on trumped-up charges; everyone in government living in fear that they are being followed, watched and bugged.

… I am angry and I am afraid. But mostly I am ashamed. Ashamed and embarrassed to call myself South African. Ashamed that in this country we all keep quiet while evil is so routinely perpetuated by a bunch we ourselves put into power.

More power to Malala’s pen. This is indeed a dark day for journalism, media freedom and political liberty in South Africa.