Tell Our Story. Julie Reid
terrestrial television, journalistic ethics and accountability systems, including press regulation, mass communications surveillance and privacy, as well as media diversity and transformation.
Central to this research collective is an untraditional mode of performing research developed by the MPDP, the audience-centred approach. In a manner that is dissimilar to Northern-developed research practices, the audience-centred approach regards the audience, the media end user, the ordinary person on the ground as primary and central to the research effort (Duncan and Reid 2013; Reid 2017a, 2018a). Each of our research efforts begins by taking the perspective of the audience/grassroots citizen as its point of departure. The audience-centred approach is not a research methodology; it is a research attitude. Our methodologies are multiple and vary because in each case they will depend entirely on the direction received from a particular ground-up departure point and the specificities of each contextual situation relative to the relationship this bears with the media or communications landscape.
For the most part, the trajectory of media policymaking is directed by those with the power and means to do so, whether they are media owners and stakeholders, corporate capital, elites in government or political circles or media regulators. As a ground-up approach to research and media policymaking, the audience-centred approach inverts the traditional top-down power axis, and operates according to the understanding that the media audience is the primary point of departure and ought to direct the progression of policymaking and research.
Clearly, the audience-centred approach can be comfortably situated within the broader context and discourse of decolonial approaches to scholarship, particularly within media studies. Our primary aim in this book is not to offer new theoretical contributions to the decolonial debate on scholarship and research, but rather to present a practical example of what such approaches may look like in practice. While the transformative trajectory of decolonial discourse on teaching, learning, training and research holds immeasurable value, much of this debate remains on a theoretical, general and somewhat abstract level. We attest that actively listening to what grassroots communities have to say, and taking their stories seriously, is one way in which to move beyond traditional Western epistemologies.
We adopt the audience-centred approach because firstly and as social scientists, we have a moral obligation to do so; and secondly, because the audience-centred approach centres its efforts on a respect for the dignity of voice(s); and thirdly, because it just makes sense: if we want to research the media, then surely the best place to start is with the peoples whom the media ought to exist for. And if not for the audience/media end users, then what or who is the media for? Further, and more acutely, without the audience/media end users, would the media even have a purpose? Simply, the media exits because of the audience. How then can we operate if the audience and its voice(s) are anything but central?
PART 1
FROM THE INSIDE: VOICE(S) FROM THE GROUND
Figure 2.1: Map of South Africa showing the three communities that provide the case studies: Xolobeni/Amadiba, Glebelands, and Thembelihle
CHAPTER
2
Community Perspective, Experience and Voice
Julie Reid and Dale T. McKinley
Asmall number of mostly independent news outlets acknowledge that the real ‘experts’ on any particular news story are the people whose lives are most impacted by the events and situations that the stories describe. The Global Press Journal employs reporters who are based within the community about which they report, recognising the value of journalism that is informed by an understanding of local languages, local customs and contexts, and local histories, so that information is framed in a culturally and contextually appropriate way.
Managing editor of the Global Press Journal, Krista Kapralos (2018) describes what she terms the ‘reliability gap’: a phenomenon in dominant news journalism where predominantly Western media groups and news outlets collect and represent data and evidence based on Western normative standards, regardless of whether the situation being reported on is geographically or culturally Western. Kapralos (2018) adds:
When one culture sets the standard for truth (and implements that standard regardless of location), the narratives that culture culls from other places are likely to be warped … For many research and news agencies, the process of gathering data results in a continual confrontation between Western assumptions and non-Western cultures. While that reality makes the truth less convenient to find, there is a huge potential payoff for those who seek it in context: A meaningful negotiation between equal partners who can respectfully create systems to help determine what is true. At Global Press Journal, we believe it’s difficult – if not impossible – to determine the truth without engaging local people. Every story we publish is reported by a local person. Every story includes sources who are as close as possible to the situations described. And reporters are supported by a robust editorial team dedicated to accuracy.
The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, insists that media outlets ought to be much more representative of the societies they aim to represent. A survey conducted in the United Kingdom revealed that a privately educated elite still dominates that country’s journalism profession, and that journalism has revealed a trend towards social exclusivity more than any other profession (Weale 2016; Jones 2016). According to Viner (2017), ‘This matters because people from exclusive, homogenous backgrounds are unlikely to know anyone adversely affected by the crises of our era, or to spend time in the places where they are happening. Media organisations staffed largely by people from narrow backgrounds are less likely to recognise the issues that people notice in their communities every day as “news”; the discussions inside such organisations will inevitably be shaped by the shared privilege of the participants.’ Similar to the UK, South Africa’s public sphere is still very much an elite sphere, and mediated national conversations on matters of public interest are predominantly determined by the interests of this elite (Duncan 2013b; Friedman 2011).
There is a societal danger in the routine exclusion of some voices while over-amplifying others. A society risks only becoming aware of a mounting crisis at the grassroots level when it is too late and when there is a social explosion, such as the critical events and subsequent massacre at Marikana (Duncan 2013b). But even when not taking such extreme dangers into account, the problem of the inequitable representation of voice still matters. The most basic and fundamental societal mandate of the news media is to inform: to provide audiences with accurate, trustworthy and relevant information about the world around them.
Regarding the South African news media, this means representing a realistic picture of the country. But this is a country that includes, and is predominantly populated by, the economically marginalised and poor. Yet, voice(s) from this societal sector are habitually excluded. The segment of society that enjoys the largest representation of mediated voice is but a small portion of the citizenry. How then, are we to know what is going on in our world when we are presented with such a limited picture? Additionally, when so under-informed about a broader spectrum of realities, how can we realistically initiate national discourses aimed at societal coherence, economic development or the meaningful promotion of social justice? In simple terms, how can we solve our own problems when we have very little idea of what is really going on?
PUTTING VOICE(S) FIRST
The various research studies mentioned in chapter 1 examined the (mis)representation of voice(s) particular to a specific marginalised profile or demographic, that is, the youth, women or protestors. In this book we chose to follow a slightly different approach, and, instead of examining a broad category of marginalised persons, honed in instead on three very particular communities and sites where stories of high news value have played out. The demographic of the people we spoke to was then of secondary importance to us.
Of primary importance were the stories that each individual had to