Fight for Democracy. Glenda Daniels
world of journalism is affected by profit motives of owners, as the closure of newspapers suggests, nor is it to deny that rural areas are inadequately covered and that the majority of newspapers have a middle class bias. In addition, the new world of technology has made the old world of newspapers struggle for its space. The traditional media world has been subjected to significant competition, an onslaught, if you like, over the last decade, with the wave of new technology that has rolled in to compete for its space. However, as media analyst Paula Fray pointed out in an interview in March 2008, if you remove cell phones from the equation of new media only a small percentage of South Africans have access to the Internet: ‘Fewer than ten per cent of adult South Africans surf the Internet but its impact is still significant,’ she said, but technology has certainly changed the way our children consume information:
Increasingly news needs to be more interactive, shorter, targeted and media now face the challenge of building relationships with their online users. The flood of information on the Internet actually promotes targeted media because people are looking for products that serve their needs. In the last year particularly, I’ve seen the online websites of print products become more interactive and multi-media.
Fray observed that the traditional world of the media was changing from one in which media meant radio, television and newspapers, to an expanded view which embraced a range of technology, including the Internet. In this new technological age the consumption of information has spread and expanded. Despite rapid technological changes, the question of who has access to these developments remains. The former Weekly Mail editor and the first journalist in South Africa to begin publishing online, Irwin Manoim, commented on the results of Internet usage in South Africa in the wealth trends survey in Gauteng (Sunday Times: 22 June 2008). His research showed that 493 000 people had accessed the Internet over the four-week monitoring period; twenty-one per cent of them had read the news online, and eleven per cent had read a daily paper online. Manoim commented that the wealthy were probably reading business news online, which the Internet provided as it unfolded, but which print can only provide the next day. ‘Internet news can be read on your office computer while you are working. It even prompts you when news that is of interest to you comes up,’ he said.
While this was the trend in the upper end of the wealth scale, or living standards measure, the Gauteng Wealth Survey also showed that printed news was doing better than ever at the lower popular tabloid end of the market (Sunday Times: 22 June 2008), reflecting the same trend in other developing countries in Africa and the East, for example China and India. Nevertheless, South Africa’s newspapers were affected by the global economic recession of 2008 and the move away from advertising in print to advertising on the Internet, which is cheaper according to Manoim. Many newspapers and magazines have closed down. For example, Maverick magazine folded in October 2008, Ymag in November 2008, Enterprise magazine in December 2008, The Weekender in November 2009, and Femina, South Africa’s oldest women’s magazine, in February 2010. Before a more detailed discussion of the complex question of commercial imperatives and the intersection between media and democracy, this chapter now turns to an overview of the legislation, a severe form of subjection which hinders the work of journalists and the free flow of information, thus signifying significant closures for democracy.
State subjection via the law and civil society reaction
A free media is guaranteed in Section 16 of the Constitution under the principle of freedom of expression. The section reads:
16. Freedom of expression
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes
a) freedom of the press and other media;
b) freedom to receive or impart information or ideas;
c freedom of artistic creativity; and academic freedom and freedom of scientific research.
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