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FIRST SIGNS OF THREAT TO FREEDOM OF
SA PRESS UNDER THE NEW DEMOCRACY?
[A piece written early in our new democracy]
Is the press too hostile to the Government? That is the cry that is being taken up at the moment by many people. It is the same old cry that the former apartheid government used: The press is unfair. It is not painting a good picture of government.
In the cause of self-interest many people are criticising the newspapers for being "too white"; for not taking affirmative action seriously, and for being a "monopoly".
There is even a movement for another inquiry into the Press. I'm sure the press won't mind an unbiassed investigation - the newspapers have done a great deal in the past few years in terms of affirmative action and unbundling, and I'm sure the papers would like to talk about it. They will want to show that the accusations just don't meet the truth.
So a public inquiry into the press might be quite a good thing - except that such inquiries never were and never will be quite innocent. We have had a dozen such inquiries - witchhunts usually - over the years. All governments, all bureaucrats believe that if they can only get their hands on the press they can polish their own images. Life will be much easier, from a friendly, not an inquisitive or hostile press.
But today the press is far from hostile to government. It is encouraging change. They must keep their distance from the State, however, and if they fail to do so - if they fail to ensure that a proper degree of independence and tension exists between the state and the media - then the whole cause of freedom of the press wihich has been fought for a hundred years, will have been lost. It will be lost because our rulers will try to interfere in the name of false democracy. |
