The Times this morning leaks an ANC document outlining its ideas to acquire or launch a national daily newspaper before the elections in April next year. It makes for intriguing reading, especially as one is left wondering if these are loose ideas, plans or just plain fantasies.
Continue Reading 2 comments July 11th, 2008
Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications is trying to fix the mess-up it made with the SABC board, but could just as easily make things worse.
Continue Reading Add comment July 8th, 2008
Pallo Jordan, now head of ANC communications, says that a media tribunal is justified because of the Daily Sun. I have a challenge for him.
Continue Reading 2 comments July 6th, 2008
Something has to be done to break the current SABC logjam, but I am not sure the proposed new law giving the government power to get rid of the board is the right way to go about it.
Continue Reading Add comment July 5th, 2008
The Mail & Guardian, in an article today on politicians claiming they were quoted out of context, had me pronouncing this inanity: “Being quoted out of context usually means that the person is quoted in a context they don’t want to be quoted in.” Let me tell you what I remember saying.
Continue Reading 1 comment June 27th, 2008
A look at the coverage of the xenophobic violence by two leading and quite different newspapers throws up interesting contrasts. I have focused on the Daily Sun and the Star in the first five days of the outbreak of the violence in May.
Continue Reading 1 comment June 13th, 2008
Walk around the sparkling new high-tech newsroom that eTV has built for eNews, its 24-hour news pay-TV channel, and you sense a small, spunky station coming of age.
Continue Reading Add comment June 8th, 2008
The prospect of a change of government in Zimbabwe provides an opportunity to reshape that country’s media along democratic lines. Let’s hope they grab the opportunity boldly.
Continue Reading 1 comment May 4th, 2008
When I opened the Sunday Times last week and read David Bullard’s column, the question I asked myself was this: “How on earth did this get into the newspaper? How did this get past the Sunday Times editors?
Continue Reading 4 comments April 17th, 2008
There is a billionaires’ battle going on in Ireland likely to have repercussions for our local media. Tony O’Reilly is facing a serious challenge for control of Independent News and Media from another Irish billionaire, telecoms mogul Denis O’Brien.
Continue Reading Add comment April 17th, 2008
The ANC has reopened discussion on starting its own newspaper – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Continue Reading 1 comment April 17th, 2008
In the days of the United Democratic Front, we used to joke about an organisation called, in the grand tradition of struggle acronyms, TWAC. It stood for Two Wankers and a Computer. I was reminded of this during the past week’s controversy over the Forum of Black Journalists.
Continue Reading Add comment April 17th, 2008
The ANC and the Government have been expressing two general concerns about our media: that there is too great a consolidation of powerful media groups, and that they are out of touch with the reality of our country. Are they right?
Continue Reading Add comment April 17th, 2008
Professor Anton Harber directs the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University. He is former editor of the Mail & Guardian.
Full bio
“I had assigned my students to produce a multisource, multimedia feature story on a topic of their choice. Several incorporated video segments, and the influence on these students’ video storytelling was clear. So I asked them about it.
It wasn’t the evening news. It wasn’t cable TV.
“Daily Show,� one said.
“Colbert Report,� added another.
“The Onion,� one said, as heads nodded around the room.
Just as I suspected. Why not local and cable TV news, I asked?
My students complained about the titillation - fear-mongering crime reports, salacious coverage of the entertainment industries, reporters and anchor people glammed up to look like models. And when TV reports covered more serious issues, including politics, they result as little more than propaganda - talking points served up from two sides, with no analysis testing the claims, beyond petty insults.”
- Robert Niles, editor of Online Journalism Review.
Radio Audiences, April 2007
Thousands of listeners, past 7 days
5fm 1438
567 Capetalk 143
Jacaranda 2617
Kfm 1116
Highveld 1255
Yfm 1200
Algoa 799
Cki 520
Classic 199
East Coast 1824
Gagasi 1603
Good Hope 571
Heart 563
Ikwekwezi 1559
Kaya 1417
Lesedi 3642
Ligwalagwala 1481
Lotus 414
Metro 5317
Motsweding 2889
Munghana 1266
Ofm 525
Phalaphala 904
2000 271
Pulpit 189
RSG 1804
SAfm 602
Talk 702 421
Thobela 3050
Ukhozi 6233
Umhlobo 4803
Community radio 6189
Total radio 28809
Source: SA Advertising Research Foundation
Reflections on Journalism in the
Transition to Democracy - Ethics & International Affairs 18, no. 3 (2004).
Click here [PDF format]
Journalism in the Age of the Market - Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture, Centre for Civil Society, University of KZN, Aug 2002
The untimely death of South Africa’s finest daily - Sunday Times, May 2005