RENDIMIENTO DE LA UNIDAD TSS003 SEGUN EL TIEMPO

As stated earlier in this chapter, South Africa’s corporate media subscribes to and is driven by the market ideology. Because of this stance, newspapers create special sections, and sometimes inserts, that deal with economic news; this is also the case in the broadcast media where business news emphasises currency indicators, stock exchange volumes, transactions and price data (Jacobs, 2004). It is interesting to note that the publication or broadcast of information that relates to inequality and poverty is “avoided and in some quarters actively resisted” (Stiglitz, 2002: 29 cited in Jacobs, 2004). In a country whose main problems are inequality, poverty and unemployment, one would expect that these issues would be among the top economic indicators. Only during special events such as the budget speech of the Minister of Finance will special reports dealing with these challenges be produced (Jacobs, 2004). Therefore, “In the end coverage of most business publications on matters of the economy has come to read like directors’ reports for shareholders. South Africa is no different” (Jacobs, 2004: 174). Although the vast majority of the media audience derive their economic knowledge from the mainstream media, the coverage of the economic and business news is mainly limited to figures with little emphasis on the political and ideological nature of these figures (Jacobs, 2004). In this regard,

and due to the fact that audiences generally lack control of the media, they “are largely subjected to the capitalist media’s construction of reality” (Harper, 2012:19).

Historically, South Africa’s corporate media has been open about its support for the capitalist economy. This has been a trend globally where, according to Harper (2012), the media has become a tool by which the ruling class’s ideology is disseminated. Analysing the coverage of a documentary “Apartheid Did Not Die” by veteran journalist, John Pilger, Jacobs (2004: 181) notes that the editor of the Beeld newspaper suggested that Pilger’s criticism should be used to unite the country behind a programme to build a “successful liberal democratic capitalist economy”. The underlying logic, as reflected in the corporate media’s articles on Pilger’s film, is the perpetuation of the liberal democracy agenda buttressed by neo-liberal macroeconomic policy such as GEAR (Jacobs, 2004).

Just like Pilger’s film, a critical analysis of the nationalisation discourse requires piecing together the socio-political aspect of the country’s transition, which according to Jacobs (2004) is fundamentally a discourse on race and inequality. The essential underpinning factors of nationalisation, at least from the ANCYL perspective, are based on addressing socio-economic injustices of the past. Indeed, this is an emotive issue far from class-neutral reconciliation and the Rainbow Nation narrative. Certainly, there is a disconnect between corporate media and its coverage of issues affecting the majority. Jacobs (2004: 200) asserts that “mainstream coverage of policy debates can be characterised by a consensus-driven coverage and disjointed analyses in which the connections between the policies and their impacts are seldom interrogated”. He argues further that the corporate media hides the effects of economic policies on ordinary South Africans with narrow ideological debates among the elites. In this regard, there is hegemony of neo-liberal economic discourse in the media (Jacobs, 2004). The demise of the alternative press in post-apartheid South Africa – just like in Britain where newspapers such as The Poor Man’s Guardian were pushed aside in the nineteenth century by commercial newspapers’

attractiveness to advertisers despite their small circulation – represents the class character of the media (Harper, 2012). This is what Harper (2012: 20) characterises as “the class warfare of the bourgeoisie against the working class”, which he argues is waged in “a maelstrom of media propaganda that seek to justify capitalism”.

Whereas the corporate media has succeeded in holding the political elites to account, its structural weaknesses have prohibited it from addressing the deep-seated socio-economic crisis

characterised by high levels of poverty, unemployment and rising inequality (Duncan, 2014).

The biggest failure of the post-apartheid corporate media has been its inability to report on the systemic features and weaknesses of the economic base when reporting on community and labour protests (Jacobs, 2004; Duncan, 2014). The corporate media coverage, besides being

“sporadic” and “episodic” (Duncan, 2014), has also been shallow, reducing legitimate community protest to “service delivery protests”. In actual fact, when close attention is paid, it emerges that these protests have little to do with “service delivery” but rather more to do with the inability of the post-apartheid capitalist economy to address deep-seated structural features in the economy (Jara, 2013). As argued by Trevor Ngwane of the now-defunct Anti-Privatisation Forum, just like with the so-called service delivery protests, the corporate media could only cover the violent episodes that accompanied their anti-privatisation protests instead of providing proper analysis of the effects of these protests (cited in Jacobs 2004). This is mainly due to the fact that the corporate media is a platform of the ruling class that reproduces its worldview “with impressive consistency, despite the vast array of programme formats and genres across the enormously expanded range of media channels available today” (Harper, 2012: 97).

The logic of market-driven processes in the country has meant that the problems of social inequality have shaped the media system (Duncan, 2014: 27). The nationalisation debate and other anti-market discourses take place within this market-driven media system, and thus it is argued in this research study that these discourses are largely driven from the viewpoint of the capitalists. Whereas the capitalist class have the ability to access the plurality of media, the working class (which is constituted by the workers, the under- and unemployed, poor and marginalised South Africans) has limited access to this diversity and thus are denied the opportunity to see a complete picture of ideological discourses such as nationalisation (Duncan, 2014).

However, the corporate media’s attitudes towards markets vary within and between countries, with the recent decades having witnessed a trend towards displacing non-commercial media that is sponsored, owned and controlled by the government with commercial, advertiser-funded media (Herman, 2002). This is also the case in South Africa where the media, including the public broadcaster and community media, has had to rely largely on advertising to survive.

Moreover, concentration and conglomeration have been apparent in South Africa’s media,

“along with cross-border operations and control of this private sector media” (Herman, 2002:

61; also see Herman and Chomsky, 1988; McChesney, 1999; Bagdikian, 2000). A case in point in this country has been the ownership of the Independent Group by Irish tycoon, Tony O’Reilly, until it was recently acquired by a South African group – Sekunjalo Investments.

As a result of concentration and conglomeration, the media structure and output have become more and more alike, and in the case of the Independent News similar stories are syndicated in its publications across the country. This point is aptly captured by Herman (2002: 61) when he mentions that “commercialisation and competition have tended to homogise media outputs as media managers have sought to reach affluent audiences and please their owners and advertisers”. One of the key features of the nationalisation discourse, exposed in this research study is the market posture and argument, through corporate media, that there is a risk of capital flight and adverse effects on investment decision associated with the discourse. The research study, through analysis of the nationalisation discourse, confirms Herman’s (2002) observations that the market now controls national policy. This research study puts forward the argument that the outcomes and resolutions of ANC’s 2012 national conference were largely informed by the pressure of the markets exerted through, among other channels, its corporate media.²¹ In this regard, the reality that “the market refers … to the collective or net actions and preferences of financial and other important market participants” as argued by Herman (2002:

62) appears to be true. The corporate media is unable to deal with and expose the monopoly right of powerful corporate interests in many industries. For example, in South Africa there have been a number of price-fixing scandals involving powerful corporate organisations in the construction, tyre manufacturing, pharmaceutical and bread industries that have not received similar attention as did the purported government corruption in the arms deal²² and Nkandlagate (where South Africa’s state president, Jacob Zuma, was accused of and found to

21 The ANC resolved against the concept of “strategic nationalisation” in favour of “strategic state ownership” at its conference in Mangaung in 2012. The organisation opted for state intervention with a focus on beneficiation for industrialisation instead of nationalisation of mines. It argued, “At the forefront of state intervention should be the strengthening of the state mining company which will capture a share of mineral resource rents and equity”. They further argued that “The state must capture an equitable share of mineral resource rents through the tax system and deploy them in the interests of long-term economic growth, development and transformation” (www.politicsweb.co.za; www.anc.org.za).

22 In 1999 the South African government entered into an arms deal, estimated by researchers to have cost the country R70 billion. The scandal has seen large swathes of South African politicians, middlemen and international arms traders tainted by corruption and bribery allegations (www.mg.co.za).

have unduly benefited from the spending of over R250 million on his private resident in Nkandla).

The corporate media, just like any other capitalist institution, employs and exploits labour in the quest for surplus. This is part of the structural factors and, as espoused by Herman (2002), consequently dichotomises the relationship between owners and top managers within corporate media. Essentially, the fundamental underlying features of the capitalist system are premised on class exploitation and thus class contestations as manifested in the corporate media’s posture on ideologically charged discourses. When dealing with the treatment of discourses such as nationalisation, it is crucial to also situate it within the framework of media structures and relationships. But importantly the corporate media’s integration into the market system and neo-liberal political economy is equally important (Herman, 2002).