Most of us who have been in journalism for an extended period paused for reflection on Monday. It was 19 October, what we have come to know as Black Wednesday, in remembrance of the day,in 1977, when the state banned three newspapers, and jailed anti-apartheid activists and journalists.

Many discussions across the country will have considered the frightening ways in which states directly or indirectly intervene in the free flow of information. These concerns are real; the reality is defiant and it is becoming increasingly justified, as part of the crudest sense of nationalism, patriotism and misplaced loyalties.

In this way, then, we may be approaching a time and a type of censorship that very few of us would, in principle and in practice, continue to resist. There may come a time when the vast majority of us may consider censorship and media restrictions as necessary even ‘commonsensical’, and freedom of expression as a luxury and a privilege. Evidence suggests that things will get worse, and probably not return to the way they were in the first 10 years of our democracy – not in our lifetime, anyway.

There are at least three main threats facing the news media in South Africa:

• Direct state intervention through regulatory or tribunal mechanisms;
• Co-option by various means of coercion and consent;
• Corporate strategies redirecting investment away from news media, especially print media, which may hasten the attrition rate of working journalists.

These threats are interwoven, and are impossible to understand independently. Let’s start, then, with attrition and co-option.

There is what may be described as a natural attrition rate among journalists. This attrition starts at graduation from university, after which very many journalism or communications students end up in marketing, public relations or other non-media jobs. I have no data at hand, but most people in the business may agree that the crop of journalists that start out in a newsroom invariably changes over time, with people leaving the craft for any range of reasons. In some ways historical patterns should not concern us here. What should be emphasised is that if the craft is not made attractive, and the news media is not strengthened, and it is no longer vibrant and independent, you might not get very many new cadets.

Second-stage attrition, in this discussion at least, is that journalists simply leave for greener pastures. This may be attributed to several things; low pay, long working hours, the mercurial tempers of editors, not understanding the difference between competition and creativity, and, well, warm beer and cold lovers … Okay, that’s based on a line by Tom Waits. If you don’t know it, you probably never worked on the night desk, or bar-hopped in search of the heart of Saturday night.

In South Africa, attrition is also driven by the seduction of higher salaries, especially in the state, where it is easy to be overpaid and under-used. I should be clear, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with working for the state; much good work gets done there, and if it is done for the right reasons and with dedication, public service is an honourable commitment. In South Africa, today, the danger to journalism, especially to the ethics and the professional conduct of working journalists comes when the promise of a large salary, access to power and notions of solidarity and affiliation lower the commitment to intellectual honesty and integrity.

Let us turn to co-option. Co-option does exactly what it says on the can. It is the strategic and wilful convergence of alternatives to state domination and control, to the point where there is no longer a difference between the state, the party and society. Countervailing voices or alternative movements are not so much suppressed as co-opted. The population, and its intellectuals are convinced that it is in their interests to support the objectives of the state, and that support for the ruling elite is, therefore, ‘commonsensical’. This is when critical thought is neutered, and protest becomes treason.

The fount and matrix of this ‘common sense’, at least in South Africa, is race or, more specifically, notions of black or African solidarity. We saw, for example, the urgency among a select group of public intellectuals to defend Omar al-Bashir because he was African. Somewhat similarly, some of Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s defenders were quite specific: his critics were attacking ‘a fellow black brother’. All that is required to suppress dissenting or alternative voices is, then, to condemn them as ‘anti-African’ or ‘anti-black,’ ‘speaking like a white man’, being a ‘house-nigger’ or having a ‘slave mentality’. Such is the nature of the totalising discourse that is instituted by the ruling elite.

Alongside these prescribed solidarities are slipped in, again commonsensically, the two things that most of history’s villains have resorted to: nationalism and patriotism. In these discussions we usually resort to the usual suspects (Stalin or Hitler) for evidence, but that would be too easy; those two belong in a class of human cruelty and evil that stands apart. Consider the proposition that Chile’s military dictator Augusto Pinochet put before the people of that country in 1978, as part of strengthening his iron rule. He asked the people to support him, in his “defence of the dignity” of the country, “and re-affirm the legitimacy of the government of the republic”. For a closer-to-home example, consider Zimbabwe’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act of 2002, which followed soon after the ruling party, in 1999, called on a disciplined media to promote more ‘patriotic’ journalism.

Just pause for a moment, and consider these words. Consider the distinct echoes and parallels with what emanates from our own centres of political power. Now think of the violation of human rights, the mass murders, the social breakdown and, in the case of Zimbabwe, the immiseration of the population.

As these realities gain force, the emancipatory impulse that drove South Africa to democracy, dissolves into the background of the country’s politics. They also place pressure on corporate investment and publication. Whether we like it or not, the best newspapers in South Africa are published by the private sector, and some of the worst-performing national institutions – from the post-office to the national airline – are operated by the state. On this we are entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts. Do we really want the state to run our newspapers?

When, for surely it seems inevitable, we reach a situation when editors have seen the writing on the wall and fallen in line, as it were, and publishers see gain (profit to run their printing presses and pay salaries) only from advertising revenue from the state, freedom of expression, a free press, independence, critical thought and everything that makes for good journalism will be lost. At that point our only choice will be between no news media, and a patriotic media.

It might not even be necessary to ban or censor the press. The ruling elite will have achieved their objectives by coercion and consent. Consent, it seems, is well under way. Coercion will come through a Parliament with the decks stacked in favour of the ruling party. DM