The Sunday Independent

Muzzling the media equates to violation of human rights

KWENA MANAMELA and MALESELA MAUBANE Manamela is an author and social commentator, and Maubane is the director of Oo Mokgatla Media and former president of the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa.

AS WE reflect on and conclude Africa Month, journalism should surely be counted among one of the most important careers in the existence of humankind. Indeed.com career website identifies nine common types of journalism: investigative, watchdog, online, broadcast, opinion, sports, trade, entertainment and political.

Another look at the common types of journalism identified above, especially investigative and watchdog, gives evidence of global trends where journalists are being prevented from doing their jobs.

The 1993 UN General Assembly proclamation of May 3 as World Press Freedom Day should be hailed as a significant move towards the protection of media freedom.

Rightfully, according to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), the day presents an opportunity to “celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom, assess the state of press freedom throughout the world, defend the media from attacks on their independence and pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the line of duty”.

This year’s World Press Freedom Day was commemorated amid the global Covid-19 pandemic under the theme “Information as a Public Good”.

Journalists are mere mortals like all of us, thus a thank-you to the men and women who took up this career should be in order, as we know our neighbourhood and the world over because of their artistic and journalistic pen.

They continue risking their lives amid the pandemic so that we can know what is happening around us, while pursuing giving us both sides of the story so that we can be the judge.

South Africa comes from a history of apartheid rule, where intimidation of journalists who were activists against segregation rule was a daily occurrence.

A case in point is the banning of The World newspaper along with several Black Consciousness organisations on October 19, 1977 – a move meant to gag the media for exposing atrocities of the then regime, including the torture of Black Consciousness Movement leader Steve Biko in detention.

The banning also saw Percy Qoboza and Aggrey Klaaste, now both late, being arrested by the Special Branch police under Section 10 of the Internal Security Act. The day is now annually commemorated as Black Wednesday and is also marked as National Press Freedom Day.

It is against the backdrop of World Press Freedom Day 2021, and governments the world over suppressing media freedom, that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s call for an end to the intimidation of journalists, while heaping praise on them for their patriotic role in probing allegations of state capture in the regular Monday letters from his desk, should have surely struck a chord with most South Africans.

Notably, May 8 marked 25 years of the adoption of South Africa’s Constitution, an occasion considered one of the turning points in the history of the struggle for democracy in this country.

Some of the rights that are relevant to the media freedom discussion are the right to Freedom of Expression and Access to information as set out in Section 16 and 32 under the Bill of Rights, which is chapter two of the country’s Constitution.

Social and digital media have added another dimension to the environment within which journalists operate. In this regard, a research discussion paper titled “The Chilling: Global trends in online violence against women journalists”, published by Unesco in April, paints a spine-chilling picture of the online plight of women journalists in executing their duties. The study involved 173 research interviews, 901 survey respondents from 125 countries including South Africa, analysis of 2.5 million social media posts and 15 country case studies.

It is shocking to learn that the study demonstrates that online attacks on women journalists are an increasing and worsening crisis, particularly in the context of what is dubbed the “shadow pandemic” of violence against women during Covid-19.

Online threats singled out to be experienced by women include hateful language at 49%, harassing private messages at 48%, surveillance at 18%, with hacking, doxxing (revealing identifying information) and spoofing at 14%, 8% and 7% respectively.

In the context of muzzling of the media and the patriarchy-leaning society, these statistics are clear evidence that women continue to suffer doubly.

Worryingly, the Unesco research discussion paper identified “news organisations still struggling to respond effectively” to online violence against women journalists as one of the eight key international trends.

In a move aimed at celebrating courageous and brave journalism, the South African National Editors Forum annually bestows the coveted Nat Nakasa Journalism Award on a deserving media practitioner, journalist, editor, manager and owner.

Befittingly, the award pays tribute to the role played by the Chesterville, KwaZulu-Natal born Nathaniel Ndazana Nakasa, an influential South African journalist, short-story writer and activist who died on July 14, 1965 in New York, and was only in September 2014 reburied near his childhood home at the Chesterville cemetery in the Heroes Acre.

SABC news anchor Desirée Chauke could not hold back her tears on hearing that President Ramaphosa shifted the “family meeting” from 7pm to 7.30pm so that our beloved Mam Noxolo Grootboom could deliver her last SABC 1 bulletins to a full audience.

This event and many others illustrate that journalists are after all emotional beings like the rest of us.

All things considered and as journalism continues playing its activist role, it should also be able to call out rogues within its ranks while rooting out the “brown envelope” syndrome.

While the South African Constitution is punted as the best in the world, we should realise that it is only our actions that drive the narrative about the country.

METRO

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2021-06-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://thesundayindependent.pressreader.com/article/281827171724337

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