Exposure doesn’t pay the rent — the South African media crisis

Back in the day, reporters exposed apartheid scandals with nothing but a notebook and a deadline. Now? As KG puts it: “Newsrooms are shrinking faster than the number of Lay’s chips inside the bag.”

Even News24, the country’s biggest site, is battling. Adriaan Basson explains: “About 92% of all digital advertising in South Africa by South African companies goes to platforms that are not owned by South Africans and are not full of journalism.”

Translation: Google and Meta took the ad money, and South African media are left passing the hat.

“So what happens when the world’s biggest tech companies become the gatekeepers of our news?” Zoë asks.

The Competition Commission isn’t laughing. Its probe found Google diverts traffic, pushes international content over local news, and costs South African newsrooms up to R500-million a year. Google’s reply? They only made R19-million from news searches and claim to have given R350-million in “referral value”.

“Referral value?” KG scoffs. “It’s like getting paid with exposure,” Zoë confirms.

Meanwhile, South Africans aren’t helping either: only 8% of us actually pay for news. Zoë clarifies that “the rest get their news on Facebook, TikTok, the website formerly known as Twitter, or just ignore news entirely.”

Without journalists, we wouldn’t have known about Nkandla, Thabo Bester or the Gupta leaks. As Professor Sisanda Nkoala, research chair of media inclusion and diversity at the University of the Western Cape, warns: “If we don’t find ways to make journalism sustainable, we really risk the texture of our democracy.”

In other words: no reporters, no receipts.

Australia forced Google and Facebook to cough up cash. Canada passed its own law. Brazil straight-up fined Elon Musk $5-million.

And South Africa? Still warming up. Songezo Zibi used to be the editor of Business Day before stepping into leading Rise Mzansi, a party now in government. He didn’t mince words:

“Google, Facebook especially, as well as other similar platforms which monetise the traffic they get as a result of their search engine capability… the government needs to charge them a levy.”

As always, Politically Aweh leaves us with the question the billionaires don’t want you to ask: Who should actually pay for the news? Big Tech, the state or you?

There are no easy answers, as usual, and Big Tech platforms won’t go down without a fight. But in the meantime, citizens will have to step up to fill the gap, confirms Basson: “You please have to subscribe the next time you hit that paywall, because it literally pays that journalist’s salary… That’s how we will grow our newsrooms. That’s how we will become sustainable.” 

“Maybe supporting independent media is more than a nice idea. Maybe it’s your civic duty,” Zoë reminds us. “Democracy runs on the truth, not hashtags. And sometimes you gotta pay for that.” DM

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