The print media is again under fire for its failure to ‘transform’ and to ‘diversify’. Parliament has been scrutinizing the country’s leading media groups and has found them wanting. They have failed to meet the requirements laid down by President Zuma earlier this year when he had said that it was imperative for ownership and staffing patterns of media organizations to reflect the country’s demographics.
Why? What on earth does the composition of a company’s ownership, management or work force have to do with the fundamental right to freedom of expression – which should be the only point of departure of anyone trading in the marketplace of ideas? How can an Afrikaans newspaper like ‘Die Burger’ possibly reflect the demographics of a nation in which only 14% speak Afrikaans? How would a media company that exercises it right to support minority political, cultural and philosophical views be able to do so if, in terms of the Zuma doctrine, it must be controlled and staffed by the racial majority?
Any individual or like-minded group of individuals – regardless of their racial composition -has an absolute right to express their views as they see fit within the parameters laid down by the Constitution. Any citizen, regardless of race, has the right to consume such views, to buy newspapers, visit websites and listen to or watch whatever they like.
The State has no right whatsoever to interfere in any way with the free flow of ideas.
What we have here is yet another manifestation of the increasingly pervasive state-sanctioned ideology of demographic representivity. We see it in government policies to limit the percentage of coloured employees in the Department of Correctional Services in the Western Cape to their national demographic allowance of 9% (despite the fact that they comprise 55% of the population of the Western Cape); we see it in the refusal to appoint sorely needed forensics specialists in the SAPS because they are white; and we also see it in the failure of the JSC to appoint excellent judges because they do not belong to the right race.
The concepts of demographic representivity and diversity are mutually exclusive. Diversity requires recognition of the right of any group of like-minded people to get together to promote and communicate about their particular interest. That interest might relate to their politics, philosophy, language, culture, religion, sport – or whatever. By definition such groups will not, and do not have to, reflect the demographic composition of the population as a whole. The requirement for media organisations to be demographically representative would, on the other hand, tend to impose the broad views of the racial majority in all communication and would thus detract from the diversity of the media.
Demands that media companies should reflect the demographic composition of the population are in fact manoeuvres on what the ANC calls the “battlefield of ideas”. In its 2010 National General Council discussion document on ‘Media Diversity and Ownership’ the ANC states that “Media and communications are contested terrains and therefore not neutral, but reflect the ideological battle and power relations based on race, class and gender in our society.”
It complains that “some fractions of the media continue to adopt an anti-transformation, anti-development and anti-ANC stance.” It says that on this battlefield of ideas “our objectives therefore are to vigorously communicate the ANC’s outlook and values (developmental state, collective rights, values of caring and sharing community, solidarity, ubuntu, non sexism, working together) versus the current mainstream media’s ideological outlook (neo-liberalism, a weak and passive state, and overemphasis on individual rights, market fundamentalism, etc.)
One of the best ways of counteracting such distasteful liberal views would be to impose demographic representivity on the main media corporations by ratcheting up their obligations in terms of Broad-Based Back Economic Empowerment. This would be a fundamental and unconstitutional interference with the right to freedom of expression. It might also encounter some unexpected problems – since many of the government’s most incisive and effective critics are black journalists.
Dave Steward
FW de Klerk Foundation
