We moan about poor journalism but refuse to pay for it. South Africa’s media crisis is rooted in our collective apathy.
We are often guilty of selective outrage as South Africans, especially privileged middle-class citizens ensconced in the suburbs.
We tut-tut at the non-payment for electricity in the townships, yet turn a blind eye to illegal connections and pirate boreholes in our neck of the woods.
We are incredulous about corruption and state capture, yet easily slip someone a couple of bob to stand in a queue or sort out a traffic ticket.
We might even buy a cool drink for a metro police officer.
We moan about the government, we wring our hands at the iniquity of it all, but eschew voting.
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We want better media, but we don’t support the ones we have.
It’s not something that happened overnight, decades ago when 24-hour news networks became more accessible, the cognoscenti migrated for news of a British or an American bent.
Later, before the invasion of Ukraine, the feed would include channels from Russia and the Gulf.
Little or no thought was given to the SABC, which does a far better job than most give it credit and continues to have an unrivalled footprint through its radio stations.
The result was as inevitable as it was tragic, not paying for your TV licence became as much a badge of honour as rebelling against the loathed e-toll scam – but they weren’t the same.
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The rot spread to newspapers. We can blame the rise of the internet and, in retrospect, the corporate hara-kiri of newspaper bosses putting everything on the internet for free to get eyeballs, while blithely charging for the print editions. But the original sin lies beyond that.
Readers just started turning off, the very same readers who, during Covid, would believe their WhatsApp groups exhorting them to down sheep dip rather than wear facemasks as the “mainstream media” (MSM) were reporting.
It’s the very same echo chamber that will blithely ask on their platform of choice why MSM didn’t report a story that they are commenting on, as they post the URL of the story being broken by the very media they disparage.
It’s a phenomenon compounded by sharing login details to circumvent paywalls that media organisations erect to ensure their financial sustainability – but seeing nothing wrong in doing so.
We get the society we deserve. If we want better, we have to do better.
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A newspaper a day keeps the bogeyman at bay.
Buy one, any one, you choose.
