It is unfortunate Covid-19 has not only robbed people off their lives, but it has also taken good journalism away from the public, including jobs. A tragedy that sees both tragedy and discouragement for the youth of South Africa who are still searching for jobs. According to Statistics South Africa, employment statistics published on June 29th 2021 show that total employment decreased by -0.1% adding only 644 more people to the count.
The South African media is regarded as the watchdogs for the society and is used as a tool to keep those in power, such as the state under a sharp eye and try to ensure transparency between them, the state, and the people. This was ensured by the arrival of freedom, otherwise known as democracy in South Africa in the year 1994. This was the era in which news were shared strictly via newspapers and community radio stations. Since the arrival of the rapidly spreading virus, this role of the media has shown to take a fall. You will be sure to find out about this as this passage goes on.
Serving as watchdogs was not the only job that came with democracy in the country’s media, but social and developmental purposes were met too. This meant that print media could advertise developing businesses and promote upcoming individuals by sharing their stories of success such as athletes competing on big stages of tournaments and coming out as winners of those tournaments. A question which one would ask is what is meant by social and developmental, and do the media still serve this purpose? Mass communication within the country has changed. Since March 2020, news has been about the now faced covid-19. There are few to no fresh stories about the citizens of South Africa and other factors that affect their lives.
Differences according to class have also ensured the limited news in public owned newspaper and magazine outlets, known as community media and private media seems to be seeing a rise in stories on people and business advertisements. Herman Wasserman who works with the center of film and media studies in the University of Cape Town wrote that private media, known as commercial media, serve largely elite audiences and are therefore more likely to produce a news agenda that is of interest to those who can afford access to commercial media, or who are attractive consumers for advertisers. This surely speaks with a very high-pitched voice that government has played a part in ensuring the “equal rights” that were supposed to come with democracy are exercised by everybody and fairly, right? The commercial and community media will surely make one realize this is not the fact. That voice is screaming in the ear, very closely
“Social constraints are here to stay”.
This is a term that came with the Marxist theory that meant that society has been organized in the way that others, the audience of the community media in this case have to labor for the elite but only to end up with the kind of media that does not offer any other news but depressing news about deaths due to covid-19 and the many lockdown levels that the country plays a game of tag with and how these lockdown levels always result in one more family being left to figure out their next meal. Once again, remember that high pitched voice.
What has set a trend in community media is that news gathering has been more based on social media. Checking of facts and verifying the story have seemingly become forgotten elements of informing the public. What people share on social media today is what journalists and media houses depend on and with this, a lot of incorrect and biased information is shared, such as the big story of the decuplets that ended up with an instruction of a lawsuit against Piet Rampedi and the Independent Media. The stem of this is how covid-19 has been made the center of all news within the country South Africa. Of course, Rampedi was trying to come up with something fresh that would probably distract the country from covid-19 and its never-ending lockdown levels. But in doing that he just had excited the country with misinformation and credit must also be afforded to social journalism, the telling of stories by the public on social media platforms, because the decuplets story spread quickly more especially on twitter.
To me, the biggest crime that Covid-19 has committed against South African journalism would have to be how it has left journalists hard focused on hard and breaking Covid-19 news and as such, t they have lost their touch on feature writing, the mere concepts of writing being to give facts after having researched on a topic. What was the rush for the story to get published without proper research? “First one across the line claims victory”? We are not playing politics here really.
It is unfortunate that big media houses such as Caxton and Media24 must shut down a few of their publications and all this is because of the crimes owed to Covid-19 in South Africa. The watchdog duty is fading with almost each story published. Some media houses are moving online and therefore newsrooms are becoming smaller as departments are being centralized. Others are only loyal to the governing party, the ANC and therefore do not necessarily serve the public with what they would like to hear about, what exactly happened to the R500 Billion Rand for instance. This is a story for another day altogether.
Victor Phemba 