Special Hearings — Media Hearings — UNKNOWN

MR LEWIN: Thank you very much Pat and Sam.  I would just like to take up, we do have the full submission, I'd just like to take up a couple of points and possibly start with this question that Pat has just referred to because you mention the, as one of the shortcomings, the weakness that comes from fragmentation, you also talk about the racial polarisation, could you as Union people what, looking ahead and in terms of recommendations that we might need to make, how you see it possible to bridge gaps?  How you see, if you like, national unity being reflected at some stage in the profession of journalism.

SAM SOUL: I think that first of all it would be very dangerous for such unity or such improvements to be legislated in any way.  I think that the industry and the professionals in it need to encouraged, prodded, towards trying to sort their own problems out.  	I think Pat has touched on an important issue when she refers to the lack of a common intellectual framework for what we do as journalists, and I think that has been a victim to some extent of the kind of violent history that we have come out of.  I think there has been a general denigration of proper intellectual activity.  It's also been a feature of the kind of newspapers and newspaper companies and media companies that we have run, there's been little interface between practising journalists and the academics and theorists who have perhaps a bit more time to look at these issues and to develop more consistent points of view.  That needs to change.  	But there are a lot of factors militating against that, certainly one of them being what we would say would be the over-emphasis on a commercially-driven media and a commercially-driven process which leaves very little room for the kind of debates and the kind of journalism which is actually going to be intellectually enriching, which is going to kind of, I think, bring people together.	Again the fragmentation of institutions, the fact that there is an SAUJ, a MWASA, a Forum of Black Journalists, an Editors Forum and a Black Editors Forum which are united on paper but I am not sure whether in practice.  These are all things which prevent us from developing this kind of unity and I think make us vulnerable as the media and as journalists to some of the same kinds of pressures and manipulations to which we succumbed in the past, and I would really hope that whatever the TRC takes out of this process they really try to point us away from those dangers.

PAT SIDLEY: I would like to add to that as well.  Firstly the cynical view on it which is that you can count on managements to ensure that there will at least be cooperation in newsrooms on wages and working conditions, managements are notoriously impoverished in their way of handling people and that will continue at least for a while and so journalists unions will keep together.  But it is my view, it is not my Union's view, I have not canvassed it and I am not mandated, and since I am sitting here with a Union hat on I have to give the disclaimer, but it's my view that the new ownership of the press, for instance my company, must begin to permeate through to newsrooms, and newsrooms must reflect in the way in which - there must be more black people employed in newsrooms who are better skilled and better qualified and it must reflect the broader society however cliched that might be, but that will probably mean that in the long run the views that we have represented in our Union will become a minority view and not such a great gap.	The other thing that one can count on of course to unite journalists is if the State takes a really strong hand in interfering in the press and I certainly hope that that's never going to be one of the spurs to unity.

SAM SOUL: I think I just want to point out that the point that Pat has made about making newsrooms more reflective of the society that they are supposed to cover is certainly well within the kind of policy of the SAUJ and she doesn't step outside the boundaries at all with regard to that.  You know we ...(intervention)

MR LEWIN: You are on a joint platform now so we will take it as read.

SAM SOUL: Okay, we placed affirmative before the companies, long before it - on the negotiating table long before it became fashionable to do so.  The fact that we never made any progress had more to do with the companies than with our own intention.

MR LEWIN: Thank you.  Could I take us back now to something else that you have referred to but which in your submission is very heavily dealt with, but it also reflects what was said yesterday to us.  This is - there are two quotes in the submission which talks on the one hand of the incredible veil of ignorance which persisted in South Africa during the apartheid years, and there's another quote which I think was from Tony Matthews writing in the Journalist about the collective delusion particularly amongst the whites.  Now I would be grateful if you could comment on that, but particularly in relation to a statement that was made to us yesterday that there were not sufficient sources of news available.  Sapa was quoted and Reuters was quoted, but the submission said that there weren't in fact sufficient sources of information for local journalists to write even if they wanted.

PAT SIDLEY: I didn't hear all of yesterday, I caught it on the radio in parts and I am not certain what that applied to, but sources began to be restricted according to who you were working for at the time.  I daresay at the SABC there were very few sources they could go to.  If you were outside the SABC and in the mainstream press you would be compelled to go to certain sources of information like the State.  	If you were outside that, where we sat in the alternative press and foreign correspondents sometimes you were cut off from the formal sources of information like the State who had a very funny system applying which really shot them in the foot, where they wouldn't talk to you if you weren't in some way in that system with them. But your sources of information were as wide as you wanted them to be, with one major exception which then cut people's perspectives, a lot of people were in jail who couldn't go to and that was a major - or of course exiled, and that would cut sources of information.  But journalists sometimes didn't look.

SAM SOUL: I would very much agree with Pat's last statement.  I think the sources of information were there if you wanted to find them, but perhaps you were not encouraged to find them or obstacles were actively put in your way.  Nonetheless I didn't see the submission yesterday but I gather that in a sense it was an attempt to justify the kind of image perhaps presented by the SABC and you know as far as I am concerned that is totally unacceptable.  I think sources of much information for journalists are other media, and imperfect as they were the English language media and particularly the alternative press, which were freely available to anybody, provided a picture which was detailed enough to tell anybody at the SABC that they were getting it wrong.  	You know it was impossible to say, I think, you know we didn't know - and I think you know if I were to underline perhaps one achievement of the English language media, for all the criticism that has been levelled at it, is, I think they made it impossible for South Africans to say, as perhaps some of the Germans claimed to after the war, that we didn't know what was going on.  There was plenty there if you wanted to see it.

MR LEWIN: Thanks very much.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you Hugh.  Hlengiwe have you got any questions?  You do.

MS MKHIZE: Thank you Chair.  Do you think the question of white ownership and management is a factor which may be standing in the way towards integration of media unions?