Listening to the honchos in the ruling party fulminating - apoplectic is the word - about the media, one is left with an impression that they regard the media as something apart from society or the community it serves. It is an enemy. They're categoric about it.
There's an unmistakable whiff of McCarthyism. The media, we're told, is the enemy of the national democratic revolution. What, one wonders, is revolutionary about the conservative macro economic policies the government is so ably and correctly implementing, for instance? The language is quaint, archaic and almost incomprehensible. It's from another planet; of a different era and a different place. But I digress.
Attacks on the media have become more virulent as the infighting in the ruling party intensifies. By reporting on the internecine battles, the media is rubbing salt on an open wound. It hurts. But the fact that they're complaining so bitterly should not be a concern. It proves the media is doing its job. In the age-old saying, the media's role is to afflict the powerful and comfort the powerless.
The media has done a superb job recently exposing the mess in our hospitals and the fraud that is our health minister. One is reminded of A Fish Called Wanda, with the crook emigrating to SA, where he became the minister of justice. If there's any criticism of the media it is that it isn't doing enough to expose corruption and malfeasance in public life. That obviously requires resources.
The way they're telling it, it's as though the media is some individual or group of persons single-mindedly conniving in dark corners to do down the government which can do no wrong. The media comprises a variety of people or voices, all expressing views which may be either similar or contrasting.
Even characterising the media as simply a vehicle, or a purveyor of views and ideas, does not adequately explain its role in society, especially a democratic one. Show me a society without media freedom, and I will show you a dictatorship.
The media exists within society, embedded in it, knotted or entangled in its milieu, its mores and norms. The media does not seek to claim more or fewer rights than those enjoyed by ordinary citizens. Yet a free media is crucial to citizens exercising their basic right to freedom of speech. Tamper with media freedom and you interfere with the very essence of democracy.
One reason the media touches such a raw nerve in our society is probably that it's made up of private enterprises which occupy a "public" space. But it's only when the media is run as a successful business that it is credible and able to fulfil its role to the public. Why, for instance, don't governments run their own newspapers? Readers aren't stupid. They won't pay for propaganda.
But does our media fulfil Miller's analogy of a nation talking to itself? The answer is no; and that's no fault of the media. The media may in fact, like everybody else, be a victim of our torturous history. Language remains the Achilles heel of our national discourse, indeed of our democracy. Millions of our people, having gained the longed-for freedom, remain almost disenfranchised. Because of their inability to write or converse in English - the language of power, politics and business - they're unable to engage effectively in the cut and thrust of our national debate, which remains the preserve of the elite of all races. They're cut off from the debates which shape their lives.
So our media is not so much the nation, but the establishment, talking to itself. But we're talking nevertheless.
