Twenty years after the Windhoek Declaration on press freedom

it can lead to a race to <strong>the</strong> bottom.
The drive to attract audience
and advertising spend may lead
to a sameness in product. This is
often content that is designed to
underestimate <strong>the</strong> public’s taste,
usually symbolised by <strong>the</strong> rise of
celebrity gossip and tabloidisation
of politics.
On <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r hand, as Alison Harcourt
and Robert Picard in <strong>the</strong> Fall 2009
edition of Journal of Media Business
Studies, note: “… <strong>the</strong> explicit link
of concentration to lower diversity
of content and pluralism has never
been established.”
They also remark on “notable
economic, financial and strategic
reasons behind consolidation and
concentration in media industries”.
In this light, <strong>the</strong> cartel-like control
by four news media groups in South
Africa, is an economic development
in line with world trends on news
media consolidation. In countries
with a population of 20 to 50-million
people, <strong>the</strong>re tend to be just three
to four leading media firms. A
similar scenario of limited private
ownership groups is a prospect in
many o<strong>the</strong>r African countries.
That <strong>the</strong>n raises <strong>the</strong> question of how
exactly such ownership affects content.
The crudest assumption is that
<strong>the</strong> news media owner has, if not
a direct say in what is published or
broadcast, <strong>the</strong>n a veto. This ignores
many issues, not least <strong>the</strong> relative
autonomy of editors and journalists.
Ano<strong>the</strong>r simplistic understanding
is that owners’ pursuit of profit
is synonymous with money-grubbing,
and that a media owner will
mechanically serve Mammon. Why
news media owners should have no
conscience or social responsibility is
never explained.
Writing on <strong>the</strong> SA Communist Party’s
Umsebenzi Online website last year,
<strong>the</strong> party’s deputy secretary general
Jeremy Cronin makes <strong>the</strong> same
mistake. “If editorial ‘independence’
swings on profit maximisation,” said
86 | Media in Africa - 2011
Cronin, “<strong>the</strong>n we will tend to get
exactly what we are often getting.
Trashy tabloids aimed at <strong>the</strong> working
class, and acres of middle-class
whingeing in what passes for serious
journalism. In short, journalism
that panders to <strong>the</strong> lowest common
denominator in its target audience.”
“...while monopolies
are unequivocally bad,
diversity of ownership
does not necessarily
guarantee a diversity
of opinion – while
nei<strong>the</strong>r does concentrated
ownership automatically
mean homogenous
content”
Yet Cronin was writing about City
Press — a publication which ironically
illustrates how <strong>the</strong> market
can sometimes support diversity.
Though <strong>the</strong> newspaper recently appointed
a black (but non-African)
woman as editor, <strong>the</strong> newsroom is
staffed by Africans and it serves an
overwhelmingly African audience.
The publication is owned by a company,
Naspers — which <strong>the</strong> enthusiastic
adoption of capitalism by Afrikaners
<strong>after</strong> 1990 has transmuted,
from an organisation associated
with Afrikaans-nationalism, into an
international money-making machine.
While over-estimating <strong>the</strong> importance
of private owners, it is common
to find people who underplay <strong>the</strong>
commercial imperative of moneymaking
media. Yet it is this hidden
hand which guarantees that <strong>the</strong>
content that journalists in profitmaking
media produce needs to
have a chance of finding a viable
audience, in o<strong>the</strong>r words — meeting
real interest or need.
Fur<strong>the</strong>r, sensationalism, to paraphrase
Tom Stoppard in his play
about journalism called “Night and
Day”, is a sign that no one is controlling
what we are allowed to read or
listen to or see. To view tabloids as
“trashy” despite, or because of, <strong>the</strong>ir
resonance with <strong>the</strong> working class is
snobbish in an old-fashioned vanguardist
way. Commercially-driven
diversity, in <strong>the</strong> sense of providing
some choice — even if imperfect
choice — means that audiences with
<strong>the</strong> wherewithal can enjoy <strong>the</strong> very
democratic act of voting with <strong>the</strong>ir
money for <strong>the</strong> media <strong>the</strong>y want.
In many African countries, diversity
as choice has often meant <strong>the</strong> arrival
of an alternative to a monopolistic
state news media. Especially in
conditions where <strong>the</strong> state-owned
newspaper and/or broadcaster tends
to lead every day with <strong>the</strong> thoughts
and picture of a ‘beloved leader’, <strong>the</strong>
‘curse’ of commercialism may seem
more like a blessing.
All this does not rule out a role
for alternative or publicly-funded
news media alongside privately
owned and commercially-driven
media. Like <strong>the</strong> fact that ownership
pluralism (or concentration) does
not mean content diversity (or
sameness), so content diversity does
not necessarily mean quality.
The difficulty is that dominant business
model of public news media in
Africa means that <strong>the</strong>se institutions
have to compete for advertising in
a commercial environment — which
does not necessarily stimulate <strong>the</strong>m
to produce different content to private
media, let alone quality content.
Africa may well have to look
towards o<strong>the</strong>r models such as nonprofit
organisations and resourcing
in order to provide particular kinds
of quality journalisms, such as in
<strong>the</strong> areas of investigative reporting,
pan-African analysis and health
journalism.