Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Abbreviati Ons and Acronyms
- 1 Introduction: The ANC and the media post-apartheid
- 2 The relationship between the media and democracy
- 3 The media's challenges: legislation and commercial imperatives
- 4 Race and the media
- 5 Freedom of expression: the case of Zapiro
- 6 Social fantasy: the ANC's gaze and the media appeals tribunal
- 7 The Sunday Times versus the health minister
- 8 What is developmental journalism?
- 9 Concluding reflections: where is democracy headed?
- Eplogue
- Appendices 1
- Appendix 2
- Appendix 3
- References
- Index
2 - The relationship between the media and democracy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Abbreviati Ons and Acronyms
- 1 Introduction: The ANC and the media post-apartheid
- 2 The relationship between the media and democracy
- 3 The media's challenges: legislation and commercial imperatives
- 4 Race and the media
- 5 Freedom of expression: the case of Zapiro
- 6 Social fantasy: the ANC's gaze and the media appeals tribunal
- 7 The Sunday Times versus the health minister
- 8 What is developmental journalism?
- 9 Concluding reflections: where is democracy headed?
- Eplogue
- Appendices 1
- Appendix 2
- Appendix 3
- References
- Index
Summary
Secrecy obstructs democracy by keeping the public ignorant of information that it needs to make wise policy choices.
This chapter argues that the media is a legitimate adversary – rather than an enemy of the people – in a fluid, changing and unrealised imperfect democracy. The ‘free’ press (and ‘free’ is used here in the sense of free from political interference, control and state intervention, not from economic, cultural or social interference) poses something of a challenge to the ruling alliance's hegemonic discourse, with its desire to limit the polymorphic voices of a diverse media.
A dissonance has crept in between the Constitution's ascription to independence of the media on the one hand and the government and state's actions on the other, creating tension in the relationship between the media and the ANC. One of the ANC's main problems with the media is what it conceives as inadequate and negative representation of its views as the ruling party. For example, at the launch of the ANC's online publication ANC Today in 2001, the ‘Letter from the President’ noted:
Historically the national and political constituency represented by the ANC has had very few and limited mass media throughout the ninety years of its existence. During this period, the commercial newspaper and magazine press representing the views, values and interests of the white minority has dominated the field of the mass media. This situation has changed only marginally in the period since we obtained our liberation in 1994 (ANC Today: 26 January-1 February 2001).
One of the issues raised throughout this book is the compulsion of these discursive interventions, which are in many respects inappropriate to a constitutional democracy. While tension between the ruling party and the media is not a recent development, it became increasingly pronounced during the first decade of the new millennium and at the ANC National Policy Conference in Polokwane in December 2007 when a media appeals tribunal to regulate the media was proposed. This occurred against the backdrop of the ANC wanting a media which would act in the ‘national interest’, one which would reconcile conflicting interests towards national consensus. In July 2010 it was announced that the Gupta Group, which was closely linked to President Zuma, would fund a daily national newspaper, The New Age, which was due to launch in mid-September 2010 (Business Day: 6 July 2010).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Fight for DemocracyThe ANC and the Media in South Africa, pp. 22 - 40Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2013