Two minor storms in the local media teacup drew my attention this week and prompt some comment. The Daily Maverick online publication didn’t publish and News24 published something that was unexpected.
The Daily Maverick online journal shut down for a day (15 April) to draw attention to its need for more money via voluntary subscriptions, or what it calls Insider donations, so it could go on doing the kind of journalism and investigations it currently offers free to the public outside a paywall.
Its stunt drew a mixed response on X (Twitter) from those who love and those who hate the DM.
But these days, with a glut of information at our fingertips via the internet, this binary response does not necessarily mean it is hitting the fabled ‘balanced journalism’ spot.
Daily Maverick is run by an independent private company. It says it is funded through a combination of contributions from its membership readers, advertising, events and grants.
I must admit up front: I am not a DM Insider as its ‘civic-minded’ donors or subscribers are called.
Maybe DM’s leaders can look into why that is.
Could it be the COL crisis, an aversion to being preached at by activists, the mixed bag of high-quality and low-quality reporting, the dominance of a progressive left lens and tired anti-DA tropes (as evidence, please refer to ‘tone deaf’ Zapiro cartoon of 18 April)?
Could it be that there are simply not enough generous, civic-minded people keen to pay so others get the same thing free?
If DM does not get more voluntary money on a regular basis it may have to go the standard paywall route. Its shut-down demo may simply be a precursor to the announcement of such a move.
But even behind paywalls many journalism operations are struggling to get sufficient commitment from subscribers.
Little to no chance
While major Australian media companies have managed to persuade the Australian parliament to pass a law that compels Facebook and Google to pay them substantial sums − tens of millions of dollars − for the content the platforms take from them to use on their pages, there’s little to no chance the current government or any South African government in the near future is going to put this issue at the top of its agenda.
It’s inevitable that the DM will soon have to sit down and reexamine its business model and content offering, format and delivery mode and possibly reinvent itself from ground zero to survive.
Continual innovation and change are the modus operandi for any journalism entity’s survival in the era of the ultimate freebie, the internet, as DM’s founders well know.
It’s taken as a given by many that public interest journalism and investigations are important to our societies and democracy. But are the people who would have to value them enough to pay for them being sufficiently consulted on what exactly is their interest and need? What is it they want investigated? How should it be delivered to them?
An unfortunate streak of hubris has crept into our journalism in recent years. Too many journalists seem to me to be overly active in leading conversations rather than reporting, questioning and reflecting this back to the public so they can make up their own minds.
My in-box nearly every day contains latest news, opinion and comment from a range of mainstream newspapers, news agencies and broadcasters, many of which can be depended on to give me the establishment or progressive left take on events.
Alternatives
It also offers me two alternatives such as Daily Friend (yay, free), and another freebie, from the US, that I’m rather fascinated by, and trialling, called Improve the News.
It’sa news aggregator that lets you make up your own mind after being offered a range of perspectives. In its print version it first presents the Facts in a few brief paragraphs, then the Spin – giving two short opposing takes. Last comes the Nerd Narrative, usually a prediction from participants in the Metaculus forecasting community. I will soon try out the ITN podcast and the app called Verity, developed by the apolitical, non-profit ITN Foundation.
Also in my cornucopia of an inbox, as revealing as a real-life bookshelf background in a Zoom meeting, are UnHerd, Quillette, Spiked, The Dispatch, The Free Press, Public News, Reality’s Last Stand and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new Restoration bulletin.
But it was News24 that first grabbed my attention after the DM’s day-long disappearance, and a trawl with trolls through X (Twitter).
The article by Pieter du Toit, assistant editor, Investigations, at News24, was headlined: Dishonesty, the DA…and what the voters really want.
(Great key words right there. Did the job for me, never mind the algorithm.)
As I don’t yet subscribe to News24 (I missed the last discount special of R20 per month for 12 months) it was a bit of a mission getting the full story behind this headline. But worth it.
Du Toit’s article was unusual, and in the current political and media climate, perhaps even brave.
‘More than most’
Du Toit wrote that after observing the Democratic Alliance for some time he believes it ‘has over the years done more than most to ensure the success of our democratic project’.
‘The party’s success,’ du Toit said, ‘lies in its ability to function as an effective political organisation, the fact that it is skilled in oversight and in charge of by far and away the country’s most successful metropolitan municipality and province.’
Du Toit said it was ‘sacrilege today’ that he had departed from the anti-DA narrative that has been spread, without evidence to support it, via hastily written reports, social media, talk shows and the commentariat.
You know how it goes: John Steenhuisen is tone deaf (alternative version: ‘the party is arrogant’), Helen Zille is a master manipulator (both the Steenhuisen and Zille tropes were used in Zapiro’s Daily Maverick cartoon). The DA is anti-poor… anti black… the list can be as long as your animus dictates.
Not all commentators, of course, resort to this overdone narrative, and some pro-DA voices are published and heard on broadcast media, to demonstrate ‘balance and fairness’ in editorial selection, particularly during an election period.
But you don’t often see a straightforward positive opinion based on evidence, written by a senior journalist in full-time employ in a media organisation that boasts several other seniors who seem at times rather preoccupied with what I call the ‘DA denigration project’.
Considering the DA is a law-abiding party with no history of violent attacks or lethal hits on anyone and that it has consistently stated its commitment to non-racism, I’ve never understood how this negative narrative entrenched itself among our media.
I certainly never preached ghosting or dissing the DA to the several hundred or so young intern journalists I trained and helped established in their media careers. Nor do I recall overhearing any overt instructions being issued in any newsroom.
Part of the zeitgeist
Maybe it was instigated via a gentle suggestion in casual encounters between political players and sympatico journalists; maybe it became part of the zeitgeist as a result of the African National Congress hegemony.
One of the first things I recall noticing was the dwindling references to the DA as the Official Opposition. It was not only the caps that went in print, but also the ‘official’.
As a result, many people today believe that the Economic Freedom Fighters are the opposition and the biggest party even though the DA still takes up two thirds of the opposition seats in parliament.
I also noticed about 10 years ago that DA representatives were no longer being used by newsrooms as second sources on stories relevant to their portfolios, except by a dwindling handful of more thorough journalists.
When DA representatives gave story tipoffs to the media their party affiliation was invariably written round or cut out, and the individuals seldom credited publicly.
Like du Toit I have seen the negative DA narrative sustained by junior journalists wishing to sound knowledgeable, commentators, and the many self-styled ‘political analysts’ filling airtime on television and radio.
One of them is shape-shifter Asanda Ngoasheng who − after working on decolonising-curriculum projects, obtaining an MA in International Relations, gaining some prominence as a ‘diversity consultant’ at a school in the Western Cape and leaving pupils in tears − has popped up as a Political Analyst. I imagine broadcast producers have her filed under ’White-/DA-bashing black, female talent’.
Anticipated tussle
But I must put down my pen now and ready myself for the imminent arrival of a courier delivering a new book and the anticipated tussle with my spouse to see who can get their hands first on How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler by Peter Pomerantsev.
British journalist Pomerantsev is a leading expert on disinformation, author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible and a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
His latest book is the story of Thomas Sefton Delmer, a British propagandist and his creation, Der Chef, a fictional German with access to the high ranks who questioned Nazi doctrine in broadcasts to Germans and influential American politicians during the war.
It may prove useful going forward if I need to morph next year into a Disinformation Expert before Ms Ngoasheng does.
[Image: Delmer reporting from a German reception camp for refugees from the east, 1958 [Bundesarchiv, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5448833]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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