The architecture of amplification — how SA news media manufactures public figures

Over the past two months, Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, the leader of the March and March movement, has achieved near-ubiquity across South African television, radio, and digital feeds. However, a closer look at her news media trail reveals that her omnipresence is not merely a reflection of spontaneous public interest. It is the manufactured product of a fragmented media ecosystem operating with wildly varying levels of journalistic integrity and a profound blindness to how it is being manipulated.

When dealing with rhetoric that directly touches the raw nerves of national identity, migration and social unrest, the news media is never a passive mirror. Broadcasters either actively dismantle dangerous fabrications or they indirectly act as oxygen lines for xenophobia.

Insiders with microphones

To understand how figures like Ngobese-Zuma so easily bypass traditional media gates, one must look at their pedigree. Ngobese-Zuma is not a political outsider trying to figure out how a studio works; she is a seasoned insider. Having spent years as a prominent radio personality, hosting shows on Vuma FM and working inside the engine rooms of Gagasi FM, she understands exactly how broadcasters think, what producers want, and how the mechanics of live tracking operate.

She knows that live radio anchors are often under-prepared, that talk-show slots require high friction to maintain listenership, and that a provocative statement is more likely to secure airtime than a nuanced, evidence-based argument. This background grants her an immense structural advantage. She does not just appear on media platforms; she plays them. By utilising the friendly cadences of a former presenter, she wraps deeply divisive and harmful ideas in the warm, non-threatening aesthetic of regular talk-show banter.

The illusion of news

The most insidious way traditional media fuels xenophobia is not through overt endorsement, but through passive institutional negligence. A glaring case study emerged during a June broadcast of The National Pulse on SAfm. In an astonishing breakdown of regulatory duty, the programme interviewed a journalist who explicitly debunked several of Ngobese-Zuma’s wildest claims, including fictitious allegations about foreign-funded NGOs purchasing military weapons.

Yet, immediately afterwards, the station handed Ngobese-Zuma an uninterrupted platform to repeat those exact fabrications completely unchecked. She threw out unverified, inflammatory statistics, claiming that 60% of serious crime in Gauteng is committed by foreign nationals, while spinning conspiracy theories about undocumented military bases.

When a public broadcaster allows a guest to stream raw, unverified fabrications as facts without real-time cross-examination, it abdicates its ethical baseline. This is where the regulatory distinction between “news” and “current affairs” becomes a shield for lazy journalism.

The Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa may technically rule on a complaint that I laid with them, that live talk shows do not fall under the strict verification clauses meant for formal news packages. However, the psychological impact on the listener is identical. By failing to enforce real-time evidentiary standards, institutional media gives dangerous falsehoods the veneer of mainstream legitimacy.

The profit of polarisation

If SAfm represents passive institutional failure, commercial platforms like Gagasi FM demonstrate something more cynical: the active monetisation of polarisation.

During a long-form appearance on the Gagasi FM Breakfast Show, the station pivoted away from rigorous journalism toward a facilitative, populist community dialogue. Ngobese-Zuma was allowed to advance deeply divisive tropes, using phrases like “spaza shop mafias” and claiming that specific nationalities are structurally and biologically linked to organised crime.

Gagasi FM shielded itself behind standard post-broadcast disclaimers stating that the “views of the guest do not represent the station”. But their digital footprint tells a different story. The station’s digital teams extracted the most inflammatory, unchecked snippets from the interview and packaged them into bite-sized, high-engagement videos for TikTok and Facebook.

This is where indirect fomentation of hatred happens. A commercial radio station transforms a live-radio slip into an intentional, curated digital product designed to trigger algorithms and drive clicks. By converting xenophobic tropes into viral currency, commercial media directly feeds the social media echo chambers that drive real-world community tensions.

The silent blind spot

But the media’s failure goes far deeper than soft studio interviews. There is a deafening silence within South African newsrooms regarding how the broader public discourse around immigration is being systematically manipulated behind the scenes. Journalists frequently report on the sudden online “groundswells” of anti-migrant sentiment as if they are organic expressions of public anger, entirely ignoring the artificial architectures driving them.

Investigative reporting from platforms like Daily Maverick has highlighted the profound silence and lack of curiosity from the broader media regarding how these viral online trends are manufactured. Digital forensic data has repeatedly shown that massive anti-foreigner campaigns in South Africa, dating from the early days of operations like uLerato_pillay ( a fictional online persona), straight through to contemporary anti-migrant mobilisations, are frequently amplified, co-opted, or steered by highly sophisticated networks. Crucially, investigations reveal that a significant portion of this digital infrastructure operates from completely outside the borders of South Africa.

These external proxies and bot networks weaponise domestic economic frustrations and unemployment rates to seed profound distrust, polarisation, and social volatility. Yet, mainstream broadcasters remain stubbornly silent on this reality. By treating artificially boosted hashtags and coordinated troll campaigns as legitimate “breaking public opinion”, newsrooms allow foreign and domestic computational propaganda to dictate their editorial agendas. They cover the spark while remaining willfully blind to the factory that built the match.

The adversarial standard

It is entirely possible to cover highly controversial figures without playing into their hands, as demonstrated by Newzroom Afrika. Their handling of Ngobese-Zuma provides a stark contrast in journalistic integrity.

Rather than treating her assertions as harmless local commentary or unverified current affairs gossip, Newzroom anchors took an explicitly adversarial approach. They pinned her rhetoric directly against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and official law enforcement data. When pushed to provide the evidentiary basis for her movement’s sweeping actions, the intense scrutiny forced Ngobese-Zuma into a telling live-air admission: “It is not our job to verify.”

This is the true role of the media. By aggressively cross-examining her claims, Newzroom Afrika did not censor her; they exposed the factual vacuum behind her platform. They shifted her from a populist hero speaking “hidden truths” to a defensive political actor who openly admits to spreading unverified claims.

The cost of the microphone

The media does not foment hatred simply by passing a microphone to a xenophobe. It foments hatred when it treats that microphone as a neutral tool, divorced from the responsibility of truth and context.

When broadcasters like SAfm remain passive, when commercial outlets like Gagasi FM repackage inflammatory rhetoric for digital engagement, and when the broader press corps remains silent on the external manipulation of our digital town square, they actively lower the moral and intellectual baseline of public discourse. They legitimise a climate where complex socioeconomic anxieties are easily blamed on a visible minority.

In a country with a fragile social fabric like South Africa, treating unverified, hateful assertions as standard morning-show entertainment is not editorial freedom; it is a dangerous failure of professional integrity. If the media wishes to maintain its position as the fourth estate, it must remember that its first duty is to expose how the narrative is made, not simply ride the wave of its virality. DM