This is the second time in successive weeks that I have considered the life and times of journalists. I worry.
Heroin, I believe, becomes incurably addictive the moment you try it. One shot and you’re a goner. So is your partner, your family, your money, your health, the whole caboodle.
This is not good. “There goes my reason for living” is how one E. Humperdinck expressed it in a song. There it goes – going, going, gone. You wind up impecunious, scrofulous, constantly begging for a fix, forever beseeching people for a “little push” (B. Joel, now).
My worry is that by dwelling on the press – not the push, to be sure, but close enough – I shall become a journo addict. “As jy saam met die varke slap, meng jy met die semels op” (source unknown, but not J. Malema). Certainly they should not be bedmates, since they are impecunious, scrofulous, fix-begging pushes. (“Pushes”? Wat die vark is hierdie? Ed.)
I focus on the recent all-white staff photo published by Financial Mail and the subsequent grovelling apology. I turn specifically to Rob Rose and the Rosebuds. Being roses among the journo thorns, they felt beauteous enough to be pictured together. So fetching was the bouquet that they couldn’t resist nosing it abroad.
No one rose to the occasion. On the contrary, the Rosettas fell like a stone. The picture, you see, revealed a nosegay of people who were, gasp!, all white. White roses were once notoriously contentious – I mean, witness the English Civil War – but that was in another country and of another time. Here in SA we understand only kakiebos.
Apparently blacks should be, not just in the picture, but also in the newsroom. So at least was accepted by Rob Rose while the roses were being dead-headed around him. “We got this wrong,” he wailed. The error extended beyond the picture and its publication. It revealed something deeper and much more sinister.
The photograph, horror of horrors, “reflected a newsroom that is not yet diverse enough”. Why should we mind about this? Everyone in SA, other than the Rose Petals it seems, should know why without being told. An undiversified newsroom “falls short of what South Africa should expect from an influential business publication and of the standard we have set for ourselves”.
Never really spelled out
The standard to which he refers is obviously not the one that once led Yorkists into battle. Quite what it is is never really spelled out. Apparently, deciding on it requires a “necessary conversation about who tells South Africa’s business story”. While the Rosicrucians so assiduously converse, however, “increasing the representation and advancement of Black journalists and editors will be a priority across recruitment, commissioning, mentorship and leadership”. So, I hope, will clarity of expression and elimination of journo fluff, regrettably much wanting here.
Noah reads my own pellucid words over my shoulder. “You can’t write this!” he exclaims. “You will be excoriated as a racist.”
“Nonsense,” I say. I like saying such things to Noah.
“People will say you want newsrooms to be all white.”
“I don’t, and you know it, Noah! I want people not to care. People who do care are poephols.”
“Isn’t that arrogant?” asks my inamorata.
“No. Where I come from, journalists should strive to be truthful. They should make every effort to provide the facts and give, when commentating, a fair assessment of them. Since one race has no better ability to do this than another, the race of the journo should be irrelevant.”
“My God, you can be naïve!” cries Noah, fast becoming my nonamorata. “Everyone knows blacks think differently from whites.”
“Do they now? Are your everybodies willing to evaluate the differences and decide which race’s are better and which worse? Whose facts are more accurate? Whose opinions are more justifiable? Whose choices sell better, and whose don’t?”
“You’re being doctrinal, dogmatic, and perverse. Be realistic. At least concede that optics are important!”
“I do and they are. But only to the poephols I’ve already mentioned. Sensible people don’t want this race-norming. They don’t want race-conscious ‘perspectives shaping coverage’.”
“You mean sensible people like you?”
“Watch me”
“Yup. Watch me. I shall take to the street and sing ‘List and learn, Ye dainty roses, Roses white and roses red.’”
“Where does that come from?” asks Noah, now the ignoramus.
“Gilly and Sully The Gondoliers. Journoliars to you!”
That night in bed, I turned a cold shoulder to Noah. I am fast becoming a braceist. Undaunted, Noah whispers, “So many puns, so much foreign stuff. Thank God you didn’t stoop to quoting Shakespeare.”
“Meaning?” I can talk and still be a braceist.
“You know, what Juliet says from the balcony. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
“Perhaps I should. A journo by any colour would spell as sweet.”
“Nah. Good night, sweet princess.”
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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