Media: enemies of free speech or essence of informed public opinion?

ACCORDING to tradition, a long time ago there was a rough, strong man who lived in the mountains, but at night sneaked into town dressed in women's clothes and stuffed naughty children into a sack and carried them away. For generations, children were threatened that he would come for them if they misbehaved.

His name was Antjie Somers, Afrikaans' own bogeyman (from the old Middle English bogge, a frightening spectre). He’s more than just a scapegoat.

These days, there is a new Antjie Somers in our public discourse: The MSM or mainstream media, also referred to as legacy media. A Vrye Weekblad subscriber, Danie Loots, referred to this as the “formal media” in an opinion piece last week.

Donald Trump calls all mainstream media “fake news” and “the enemy of the people”. His newfound disciple, Elon Musk, rides the same horse – the media is “a chorus of puppets singing in unison”.

The most notorious members of this wicked club are CNN, the New York Times and MSNBC, but the BBC, German newspapers like Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the British The Guardian and The Observer, the French Le Figaro, and the Dutch De Volkskrant are mentioned in the same breath.

In South Africa, all newspapers, news websites (except perhaps Solidariteit’s Maroela Media, Pretoria FM, and AfriForum TV), and talk radio stations are certainly card-carrying members of the cursed MSM, with News24 leading the choir. And Vrye Weekblad is the altar boy.

We are supposedly controlled by a dark power and instructed to promote a left-liberal agenda and demonise all conservatives and ethnic nationalists. Just ask Steve Bannon, Nigel Farage, Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, and Ernst Roets; they will confirm it.

This, of course, is unintelligent nonsense, a conspiracy theory so absurd it doesn’t even justify space for rebuttal.

Antjie Somers

The salvation of public opinion, of course, lies in Twitter/X, Telegram, WhatsApp, and thousands of podcasts and YouTube channels – this is where the truth resides; these are the only sources that are not told what to write or broadcast.

This is also the position of our reader Danie Loots – and let me add immediately that I greatly appreciate that he took the time to subscribe to Vrye Weekblad and spend time writing down his objections and criticisms for us. I’m using some of his arguments here not to pick on him, but because they are shared by many critics of the media.

Danie believes that the MSM is on its deathbed: “The formal media’s days [are] numbered; I think the formal media will struggle for a while longer and then virtually disappear.”

(The New York Times currently has 8,83 million digital subscribers and sells 296,000 printed newspapers; in the case of the Wall Street Journal, it’s 3,4 million and 560,000. CNN and MSNBC have shown strong growth over the past year. South Africa’s News24.com surpassed the 100,000 mark for paying subscribers earlier this year.)

Danie finds Vrye Weekblad's “perspectives one-sided and repetitive – just the perspectives of most Western media, like CNN, BBC, and The New York Times”. (He may not have noticed my recent sharp criticism of CNN and BBC’s handling of the war in Gaza or my negative commentary on U.S. foreign policy.)

And Danie states that he consults Twitter/X and Telegram “all day, every day” and explains that he gets a very different picture of, for example, the war in Gaza and Donald Trump’s legal troubles than what the “formal media” or MSM presents.

I’m not even going to try preaching to Danie about the difference between trained journalists in registered media who can be held accountable by professional bodies and the courts, and “citizen journalists”, professional propagandists, and every Joe with a microphone or computer who thinks the world should know what they think.

Just this: If you read Vrye Weekblad or the Sunday Times, you know who and what they are, who owns them, who the writers are, and where their headquarters are. If you disagree with something, you can write a comment that they will/must publish, and if they offend you, you can take them to the Press Council (at no cost to you) or initiate legal proceedings. They are fully accountable.

But Danie makes a point shared by more than just conspiracy theorists: “Currently, I get the impression that VWB (like almost all Western media, on all sides of the spectrum) is trying to tell me what my opinion should be.” He says the media should just “give me the information and leave me to decide”. He also writes: “I believe VWB and journalists could achieve much more by enriching readers' worlds, providing information and perspectives, and allowing readers to decide for themselves without preaching to them or wanting to judge them.”

Of course, the media must document relevant information, and it must be done fairly and justly. Reliability and credibility are the media’s small nodes of power.

But the old concept of a “newspaper of record” no longer exists, if it ever truly did; it can no longer exist. Radio and TV news, along with daily news websites, mainly convey what has just happened and who said what, while political parties, pressure groups, companies, and activists use Twitter/X and other social media like Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to spread their news and opinions immediately. Hansard documents all parliamentary debates verbatim.

In 2024, there is no shortage of information. On the contrary. The challenge is how to make sense of the flood of information.

For most of my long journalism career, the media relied heavily on news services like Sapa in South Africa, Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, and others. (Sapa has since been shut down.) These agencies had to adapt to new needs and now send not only news reports but also interpretive material, analysis, and opinion.

In the old days, such articles were placed on the page opposite the editorial, the so-called op-ed. Today, articles that analyse, contextualise, and offer opinions are spread throughout the newspaper or news website.

Analysis and background, like opinions, can by definition not be “objective”, because they reflect the writer's insights. Readers understand this.

South Africa’s popular Daily Maverick, which many Vrye Weekblad readers follow, offers, like us, no “yesterday’s news”.  All their articles are interpretative and analytical, and they occasionally publish investigative journalism in collaboration with amaBhungane and Scorpio.

This is the space now occupied by newspapers/magazines/websites like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and De Correspondent – and in South Africa by Vrye Weekblad among others. The idea is to help readers make sense of the abundance of information, explain their world, and share new insights and ideas.

So, if you want to read about yesterday’s crime, social scandals, natural disasters, political moves/statements, and celebrities, you (in Afrikaans) read Netwerk24.

Every publication (thankfully) has its own personality, style, and approach. Intelligent readers understand this and keep it in mind when reading.

One consideration when choosing articles is how a topic is covered by other media. If the media in your environment, for example, overwhelmingly favours the Israeli army’s side in the Gaza war, there is an impulse to balance that with a more critical view. Solidariteit and AfriForum dominate the Afrikaans media, so Vrye Weekblad mostly steers clear.

Not all opinions or statements have equal value or deserve equal recognition. The views of Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, the Dalai Lama and the Pope on ethics and morality, for example, carry more weight than those of Jacob Zuma, Panyaza Lesufi, or Steve Hofmeyr. This, of course, is the subjective judgment of the editorial team.

“Present all sides of an issue” is not always the right thing to do. For example, there are “moral absolutes” like child abuse and gender violence that have no “other side”. It would simply be ridiculous to give people who believe the earth is flat the same space as scientists who can prove it isn’t.

Danie Loots' criticism, and that of other readers who responded to my invitation by sending emails (to dupreezmax@gmail.com) with their views on our coverage, has made our editorial team think deeply.

One reader specifically said they don’t think Vrye Weekblad has a proper focus. I’m starting to think that might be partly true. We are reflecting on this.

We are also fully aware that we do not only serve “progressive" readers (nor should we), but readers across the entire spectrum of political and social views – anyone interested in quality and in-depth journalism.

I, personally, will never get myself to treat the madness of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, or Jacob Zuma with anything other than intense disgust. I will always write sharply critically about all manifestations of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, corruption, abuse of power and ethnic chauvinism.

But I write under my own name with my photo attached, so all readers know that this is how I see it. They don’t have to agree with me. Our comments section is the most intelligent and rational of any publication in South Africa.

What Vrye Weekblad can and should do going forward is to more regularly feature the voices of people and opinion leaders who do not share our editorial team’s somewhat liberal views – just as we have already given space to Flip Buys and Kallie Kriel, and perhaps should also do so with the MK Party and the EFF in the future.

But this must not mean that we become an amorphous entity trying to please everyone and undermining our own character.

♦ VWB ♦

BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION: Go to the bottom of this page to share your opinion. We look forward to hearing from you.