Blade's illiberal offensive against the print media

Higher education minister Blade Nzimande reportedly said last week that the print media constitutes a “huge liberal offensive” against “our democracy”. He suggested instead a “revolutionary” defence of the constitution. Yet again an interlocutor in the current debate on the media is here simultaneously making a sensible and a daft point. So it is worth separating the good from the bad.

First, the constitution itself drips with liberal ideology. The liberal majority in the print media certainly do not have a monopoly on liberalism. Minister Nzimande’s implication that a distinction be drawn between a liberal media and a revolutionary constitutional order is misplaced. Unless the minister wants to reject the inherent liberalism within both the constitutional text and our constitutional jurisprudence, he had better distinguish criticism of the mainstream print media from liberalism as such. Liberalism is not the enemy; irresponsible journalism is.

Secondly, “our democracy” is not really at issue here. For one thing, it is rather naughty to refer to “our” democracy and thereby leaving it conveniently unclear whether the media is, in the minister’s heart and mind, part of “our” democracy. The underlying motif is that of “us” and “them”.

More importantly, however, it is irresponsible to exaggerate what is at stake in this debate. It is not true that our entire social and political edifice is threatened. We are having a healthy debate about a particular aspect of living in a democracy, that of deciding what the moral limits are on general liberal freedoms such as freedom of the press or freedom of expression. This debate comes and goes in all liberal democracies, as particular cases arise at particular moments in time. It is an old philosophical chestnut. We should not fear this instantiation of the debate.

Many in the print media fear this debate. Indeed, one editor in their weekly column took pride in confessing an utter disinterest in engaging the ruling party on this question, as if open sulking is virtuous. Imagining the ruling party as beyond the moral pale is not just ill- considered but also a strategic blunder. Fortunately most print media editors have realised at least the pragmatic justification for engaging the ruling party on this issue even if many secretly (and some openly) also unhelpfully frame the debate in Orwellian terms.

What we see here from minister Nzimande is a variation on the theme from the solipsist editor who desists from engaging politicians. Nzimande himself is rendering the debate larger than life. That is unnecessary, unhelpful and simply inappropriate. It is, in a sense, merely a pedestrian internal dialogue within our country about a balancing of legitimate competing interests. It is not democracy that is at stake here, Mr Minister; it is simply democracy that is being rehearsed here. In fact, it is called, in that alliance phrase that should be familiar to you, a “contestation of ideas”.

There is, however, an important grain of truth lurking in the minister’s illiberal offensive against the print media. The mainstream print media is, indeed, liberal. Actually, Xolela Mangcu put it best when he unpacked the media’s portrayal of Jacob Zuma in the lead up to the 2009 elections as a harsh portrayal informed by a liberal, cosmopolitan, middle-class consensus that clashes with Zuma’s life narrative and public image, that of a conservative, traditional, pro-poor, non-English speaking herdsman. In a very visceral manner, Zuma constituted a jarring image for the liberal print media. That, more than his more obvious flaws, was the real motive for discontent with his presidential candidacy.

Of course, there are differences between our various newspapers. These include ideological differences. City Press is slightly more Africanist than, say, The Sunday Times. And Business Day is pro-business in a way in which The Sowetan probably is not. But these marginal differences belies a broader middle class cosmopolitanism cutting across these differences. The truth is that the poor black majority can only see themselves in the exclamation marks of Daily Sun. This reality is perpetuated by the print media’s lack of willingness to reflect on the inherently ideological nature of news construction.

There is a myth among many of my friends and colleagues in the print media that it is only on the opinion pages that you find value-laden material. This is either dishonesty at work or shocking ignorance about the unconscious ways in which our own personal narratives influence even the reporting of a seemingly value-neutral story reporting on a court case.

Minister Nzimande is therefore right in his implicit suggestion that there is a lack of ideological diversity within the media. That truth, however, gives the minister no basis to tell the electorate and African National Congress members that the print media is effectively an enemy of democracy. Such gross exaggerations are, in fact, the real threat to democracy.

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