Special Hearings — Media Hearings — 1997-09-15

JONATHAN PROCTOR: Chairperson, the question really goes to the heart of the problem that we face and that is how   do you set up a media environment that makes sure that media professionals don't advance the agendas of sectorial interests and you know these questions obviously tax us as media professionals enormously.  How do we make sure that we get advertising revenue without offending the advertisers.  We don't want the advertisers to influence our programming decisions.  At the same time how do we make sure that all the  politicians are happy because every politician wants to use the media to report back to his boss and to his  electorate as to what's going on.  And as a media professional you sit in the middle of all these competing forces.    We have been busy with a project recently and one of the ways that we have started approaching, dealing with this problem, is to go right back to the constitution.  The constitution itself sets up a framework by which we, as South Africans, expect to live and interact with each other.  It flows into the Bill of Rights and it flows into a long set of values that have been set up, Gender Commission and Rights Commissions and so forth.  If we make all of these policy framework issues part-and-parcel of the context within which media professionals have to operate you've already gone a long way to making sure that the conduit of communicating information from information providers to the audience a much more clean environment than it has been in the past.  That's one of the ways in which we can seek to achieve this balance in the middle.  For our own part we were paying Hugh Masekela and Kite Semenya and all these people, not because we were really trying to advance any political agenda, they were good.  The audience wanted to hear them.  The SABC eventually started playing them because they found out that they were good. The SABC made political decisions, we didn't make political decisions, we just made audience-related decisions.  And if the media also looks to its audience more and listens to what its audience wants to hear and see and doesn't presume that  people out there that are reading newspapers, that are listening the radio, that are watching television are morons, they are not morons.  The audience is a very discerning audience and the more opportunities the audience has to hear different points of view and channel (...indistinct) the better.    For me as a broadcaster  my shelf-life is  exactly the last 30 seconds and if I broadcast a bad programme somebody is going to sit with a remote control and press the button and go to somebody else's channel.  If there is only one channel and you have no choice, as we have had in the past you have a problem.  But we are entering into an environment now where there is going to  be a choice and if you don't deliver the goods the audience is going to remove you.  They are the people that elected our politicians, they set up our constitution, they are the people that will decide on a daily basis.  We don't get voted into office every four  years as broadcasters, we get voted into office every single day by our listeners and viewers and if we listen to them and respond to them we will stay in office for a very long time.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.  I have  to indicate that we have a  slight problem with scheduling and if you will agree with me, thank you very much, that we are going to take the tea break now, a 15 minute tea break and return about five to 11 because Radio - we are being manipulated - no, Radio 2000 starts at 11 and I think it is important that what is happening here gets a -  Thank you for your understanding and for your agreement.

CHAIRPERSON: ...of you on listening to me and being so nice, especially with all those nice cakes and things  that we have had to leave behind.  Welcome Mr Raubenheimer, welcome.  I will now hand over to Denzil Potgieter please.  S A B C
NEWS AND ACTUALITY

<UNKNOWN>: Thank you Chairperson.  Good morning Mr Raubenheimer.  We are very happy to have you here this morning, thank you for coming.  Before we take your testimony I am going to ask you to take the oath.

LOUIS RAUBENHEIMER: When it comes to (...indistinct) views, I would prefer to do it in Afrikaans if that's okay with you.

<UNKNOWN>: Yes certainly.  We do have translation devices which can be used for people who don't follow Afrikaans.  We were about to distribute them, I know that they are available and somebody was going to distribute them for us to people who need them.

LOUIS RAUBENHEIMER: Also Mr Chairman I have got some quotes here from old policy documents and quotes from talks, unfortunately I could not find the English document or the English file for some of these  so I've got to quote some of these in Afrikaans, unfortunately.

<UNKNOWN>: It is in order Mr Raubenheimer  we will interpret that for the people who  do not follow Afrikaans but I'm going to ask that you take the oath in the meanwhile.

LOUIS RAUBENHEIMER: (sworn states)

<UNKNOWN>: Thank you, you may take your seat.  We will just wait for a brief moment just to allow people to get hold of these translation devices.  Can I in the meantime just explain the devices.  Thank you very much, we will start with the testimony.  Mr Raubenheimer thank you,  welcome for attending.  We are glad that you made the opportunity, that you went to some trouble of getting here.  You had a long career in the SABC, a period of 25 years and you are still  involved in the Corporation.  We find that very useful to have you here.  Could you perhaps by way of introduction sketch a brief background of your experiences within the Corporation to the present.

LOUIS RAUBENHEIMER: I suppose you are referring to my occupational history at the SABC, is that correct?

<UNKNOWN>: Just briefly take us through that before you get to your actual presentation.

LOUIS RAUBENHEIMER: I started in 1972 in the personnel department as a personnel officer.  Then I attended the first television training course presented by the SABC in 1974.  For a brief period I was a TV producer and director,  presenter of two different actuality talk shows.  And then from 1976 onwards I joined the radio news department as a news background writer, from '76 to '79 writer mainly of Nguni, Sotho news back-grounders and translating some news commentary talks.  From '84 I was senior news commentary writer involved especially with translation of comment and - editorial comment.  And then  in '85 I was appointed editor,  public affairs radio in charge of Radio Today, Update, the actuality shows on English radio, nowadays SAFM and also on the Afrikaans service Monitor and Spitstate, actuality programmes.  I still had responsibility for comment.    In '88 I was appointed executive editor news planning.  In 1989 editor-in-chief of news strategy.  News strategy meaning doing some environmental scanning because that wasn't a line function but it also meant planning the news division of that time along business lines.  At that stage SABC was involved in establishing the different as business units.  That briefly, I think, is an outline of my different positions.

<UNKNOWN>: Thank you very much.  And you are presently the head of TV1 is that correct?

LOUIS RAUBENHEIMER: In 1990 I was appointed acting general manager of TSS Network.  That was the old Top Sport surplus network of the SABC that was transformed into - that was my job at that stage, to transform that network into an educational channel.  Later on it changed to NNTV, and at the moment I am general manager of SABC 3 which developed out of those two services.