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Zuma's absurd attack

I WORRY that President Jacob Zuma and Hlaudi Motsoeneng, the chief operating officer  at the public broadcaster, complain unnecessarily when they attack local media for not reporting positive news.

Their charge that the local media is focusing too much on negative news seems far-fetched.

This week Zuma started a biting assault on the South African media, saying its reporting is so negative that it often makes him feel like escaping this country.

Zuma also charged that the media cared less about informing the public and enhancing South Africa’s reputation than just making good profits.

He was speaking to journalism students from the Tshwane University of Technology, who visited parliament as part of an excursion to Cape Town.

"When I go out, people envy South Africans, they wish they were South Africans because they say we are doing so well, we are succeeding… they love it,” Zuma told the students.

"But when I am in South Africa, every morning you feel like you must leave this country because the reporting concentrates on the opposite of the positive."

Motsoeneng, speaking in an interview with Sunday Times’ Chris Barron, urged the paper's reporters to think positively at every morning news conference to get good stories.

He said he was more interested in stories that built the nation than those that destroyed it.

It is likely that positive stories can be highlighted every day in radio news bulletins and newspapers.

But there is precious little evidence suggesting that the South African media does not cover positive stories, as Zuma and his megaphone would like us to believe.

Motsoeneng, in the same interview with Barron, claims that he was a journalist before assuming the position of COO.
He should know better than Zuma, of course, that what could look like a negative story could actually have positive results.

My professor when I was at the journalism school in the Western Cape used to tell us that the objective of running any story was inherently positive.

The only problem, he would say, is how the story would affect those in close proximity to it.

For instance, a story about the mismanagement of funds could cause people who have lost money to kill themselves or feel stressed, when there would have been little chance of this had the story not broken.

When the Fidentia story came out a couple of years back a number of people who had their money invested in the fund manager suffered stress, while others could have died because of this.

Now, whoever broke that story no doubt had good intentions in mind.

They meant to expose Fidentia, so that the mismanagement of money belonging to widows and orphans could stop. Is this not positive? What we can say is that the story had unfortunate consequences, but certainly wasn't negative.

Remember, the story kickstarted an investigation into the Fidentia scandal, followed by a court hearing; the abuse of people’s money subsequently came to a halt.

Zuma himself fired Bheki Cele as national commissioner of the South African Police Service in June 2012, following Cele’s involvement in the awarding of a R1.7bn contract for a police building lease.

When the Sunday Times’ investigations team first broke this story, the main aim was to stop this craziness from continuing when it came to their knowledge.

The story may have been seen as negative by Zuma and his cohorts when it was first published.

But it prompted investigations by Public Protector Thuli Madonsela. The story also incited Zuma to do the right thing and fire the corrupt police official. Would we say the story was negative? No, not at all.

Zuma and Motsoeneng must tell us what exactly they mean when talking about positive reporting.

If Motsoeneng was a well-trained reporter during his time, he would know that about 90% of stories published in our serious newspapers and magazines are written with good intentions. I am not talking about tabloid journalism, of course.

Zuma should stop calling for positive reporting because it is there. He should be honest and tell the country that every time he looks at the news, he realises the mess the country he is leading is in.

Remember, the media is the mirror in which we see ourselves as a country.

 - Fin24

*Mzwandile Jacks is a freelance journalist. Opinions expressed are his own.
 
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