Long, hard road ahead to journalistic excellence

THE quality of public discourse in SA is poor. Simply scan the letters and opinion pages of major newspapers, observe presentations and discussions at conferences on the university circuit, or sit through current affairs programmes on radio or TV.

There are a number of reasons for this: a web of problems in our education system; deep income inequality that shapes the individual learning experience; and a South African penchant for substituting reasoned debate with attributions of malicious motives, often based on race or class.
Precisely because the reasons are so complex, improving the standard of public discourse won’t be easy. But one entity we can hold to account immediately is the media.

A little intellectual curiosity from journalists would go a long way to solving the problem. We need not wait for structural changes to the education system or improved socioeconomic indices to produce legions of intellectuals. Indeed, the media can help us attain these levels of education by improving the quality of their reportage and analysis that are offered to the public.

Many media professionals have tried to convince me that local readers, listeners and viewers are the ones lacking in curiosity. But that, surely, is thoughtless projection at best. It does not justify pedestrian analysis.

Of course, one needs to take account of the context within which a piece of writing or broadcasting content is produced. But I do not believe the condescending assumption that the average South African lacks the attention span to read at least one essay- length piece of social or political analysis a week.

I take issue with the unspoken editorial assumption that a piece of writing that is of a standard good enough for top international publications such as the Times Literary Supplement or New York Times has no place in any of our top dailies or weekend newspapers. This assumption that local readers lack intellectual curiosity says less about the attention span or thirst for analysis of the local reader, listener or viewer than it does about the lack of intellectual curiosity of local media professionals.

Journalists mask their intellectual vices by internalising the lie that those consuming their ideas share these character flaws.

To be fair to the print media, broadcasting is in much worse shape. This is, of course, partly due to the fact that decent, if dry, comment from local celebrity academics sneaks into the odd newspaper comment space; and week-old content from The Guardian or Los Angeles Times, or some other paid-for portal of old international essays, gets republished in our weekend newspapers as a convenient substitute for local content. Has-been politicians, milked for the sales value of their bylines even when they have little fresh to say, complete the comment space.
Reportage, on the other hand, is mostly lacking in analytic content, although a few investigative journalists sometimes produce award-winning stories.

Broadcasting is more honest about its mediocrity. If I were an international investor looking for political risk analysis of southern Africa, South African news or political anchors would be the last people I would turn to. Our news and current affairs teams on radio and television lack that kind of gravitas.

It is little wonder that they mostly generate second-hand content that is picked up from newspapers and magazines. Even programmes such as Special Assignment and SAfm’s After 8 Debate have lost their legendary bite.

Journalists should start to read more widely, and do better primary research. The pressure of deadlines is real, but is no excuse for not reading widely and thinking hard. One cannot sit in Auckland Park or Rosebank and know what it is that protesters in Mpumalanga think. Nor can a young journalist, even with his baby face caked in Maybelline make- up, complete with Model C enunciation, “live from the scene”, give us the true, hidden facts and insights of a complex story by simply pulling the closest local towards the cameras for a pseudo-interview. This is not to suggest that immediate, and continuous, news coverage is unimportant. But there is not sufficient balance between these minute-by- minute broadcasts and more carefully researched, broadcast packages.

Call me the colonial victim of an English sojourn, but I would love to one day wake up to a morning radio programme in SA that sets the news and current affairs agenda in a similarly powerful manner as does, for example, the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio 4 slot, The Today Programme. The key difference between it and SAfm’s AM Live? Again, intellectual curiosity. Intellectual curiosity means reading widely, doing primary research, thinking carefully about your argument, and soliciting — demanding — critical feedback and coaching from peers.

We cannot regard a typo-free piece of writing as the ideal (and, even then, an ideal at any rate routinely ignored by many editors and sub-editors), nor a 30-second audio insert devoid of “ums”, as articulate and compelling.

The road to journalistic excellence is necessarily tough.

McKaiser (www.safferpolitics.co.za) is a political and social analyst at the Centre for the Study of Democracy.

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=83543