Media must obey ethics code of independence

TURNING newsrooms into a DA campaign war room is ethically flawed. The preamble of the SA Press Code gives us a guiding context on the role of the media in society.

With its clear text, it helps to bring that preamble into this argument.

It reads: “The press exists to serve society. Its freedom provides for independent scrutiny of the forces that shape society, and is essential to realising the promise of democracy. It enables citizens to make informed judgments on the issues of the day, a role whose centrality is recognised in the South African Constitution.”

This requires that journalists perform their duties in a manner that is independent from any influence, including reporting from political perspectives flowing from individual party membership.

The relationship between the DA and the Sunday Times is likely to make the latter the mouthpiece of the former.

Recently, news that a former DA spin-doctor, Gareth van Onselen, was appointed by the Sunday Times and Business Day as a journalist, rattled the public.

At issue was the question of his fairness and objectivity in what he writes.

Within no time, revelations that a number of journalists, including the now suspended Sunday Times executive editor, Brendan Boyle, were jostling for positions in the DA parliamentary list shocked the political discourse.

On the heels of this, a Die Burger journalist, Helga van Staaden was reported to have been sworn in as a DA councillor in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro.

It is not their political affiliation that is at issue, but the fact that journalists in the employ of a newspaper harbour ambitions of representing a political party in parliament or in councils.

The constitution of this country, which was proudly brought to you by the ANC, guarantees rights for every South African to the freedom of association.

But because these journalists write about political parties, criticise party policies, positions and statements, their fairness is not guaranteed. At the end of the day, communities served by these journalists who are still in the employ of the newsrooms will not get independent reports but material tainted with political positions.

In the case of Van Staaden – though relevant to all journalists in her situation – a question one asks is, how long has she been a member of the DA that she would quit her job to represent it in the council? There is no political party that can deploy a stranger to its policies, political objectives and outlook to represent it in public office. So, it is my argument that there is evidence to argue that she has been a member of the DA all along and that her reporting put the DA in a positive light while the ANC and other parties got negative coverage from her stories.

Ethics alone could should prevent these journalists from trying to be the referee and the player at the same time.

Throwing your hat into a political party list ring process while writing about other political parties is not fair to those other parties.

Worse for members of these parties who are – right or wrongly – sources to these journalists, is that the indications are that their confidentiality will be at stake as their trust is betrayed at the altar of political expediency.

Taking sides in the political discourse as these journalists are doing, is hardly serving society but political interests.

These revelations attempt to betray this trust, something many ANC leaders and freedom fighters outside the ANC fought for.

In our policy document for the new South Africa, we argued that because our country was a closed society with the media pandering to the interests of the apartheid government, the constitution must not only guarantee freedom of speech but that people must benefit from a circulation of ideas and information, and to be exposed to different philosophies and ways of seeing the world.

We accomplished this with a democratic constitution not only entrenching these rights but also making sure that our people are protected as they enjoy each right.

With this having been accomplished, we frown upon an attempt by a newspaper and its journalists to undo this great work by having lobby journalists influenced by political persuasion of the DA limiting the flow of ideas and information, thus limiting how our people see the world.

At the centre of our commitment to media freedom is that, these freedoms must be underpinned by an equitable distribution of media resources, development programmes and a deliberate effort to engender a culture of open debate.

Having newsrooms whose top positions are occupied by partisan journalists defeats a deliberate effort to engender open debate, a flow of ideas and information because in such a situation, you get one perspective, that of the DA.

Interestingly, this came at the same time as the DA flip-flopped around its vote supporting the employment equity bill.

It is no surprise that reasons behind and implications of the flip-flop didn’t attract media reporting and analysis interpreting its meaning to the black South Africans in the DA.

After supporting the bill in the national assembly, former DA labour point-man, Sejamothopo Motau was fired from his position and dumped into the economic development portfolio. Still, journalists accepted this as a normal decision with no questions asked.

For a long time, we have been complaining about the negative publicity the ANC and its government has been getting from the media but all these fell on deaf ears.

Like any country, we come from an era of partisan journalism where content was driving the political positions of media owners.

But we have since matured into constitutional democracy with an independent media focusing on, as written in the SA Press Code, serving society. We must then decide if we want to go back to the partisan media era or fix the current system we have with its own glaring limitations.

For the press to serve society independently, we need a cadre of journalists doing their job with no political, commercial and personal interests.

I know some will compare this with journalists who quit the newsroom to work for government. We must accept the fact that government is different to political parties. Journalists wishing to join political parties must first resign from their jobs and not have any influence in the newsrooms.

Mlibo Qoboshiyane is the local government and traditional affairs MEC, ANC provincial working committee member and head of elections for the Eastern Cape