What is the point of television news in Swaziland? I ask this after reviewing several weeks’ worth of evening news bulletins on both of the kingdom’s channels: Swazi TV and Channel S.
The chief executive of Swazi TV Vukani Maziya told a public meeting in June 2007 that the station was going to become a public service broadcaster (PSB), and open up the airways to give more people the chance to get their views heard.
Martin Dlamini, the government’s Director, Information and Media Development, at the same meeting, supported the idea of PSB, describing it as a way to ensure people have ‘the fundamental right to freedom of expression’.
These are fine words but as is usual in Swaziland people in authority tend to say one thing in public and behave quite differently when out of the spotlight.
A very good way to test the fine words is to watch the programmes on the stations and see for oneself what they are doing. One revealing place to look is at the news bulletins and notice who is allowed onto the airways and to listen to what they are saying.
If you take the news bulletins of either of the two Swazi television channels you will see that most of the reports are mundane run of the mill events, such as government media conferences, presentations of donated materials, or workshops from NGOs
In theory, news on television can give space to people who do not have a place to air their views. But for this to work the reports that appear on television need to be of high quality, relevant and useful to the audience. Television needs to allow the expression of a full range of opinions and matters of public concern.
If you watch news bulletins in Swaziland (both Swazi TV and Channel S are the same in this respect) you see that the news is dominated by ‘official’ voices. These are representatives of the monarchy, of government or of non-government organizations.
I have been to events in Swaziland at which government ministers or their representatives have given a welcoming address before the business proper of the day begins. Time and again the television stations will record the official statement of the minister before packing up the camera and moving on, leaving the main purpose of the event uncovered. This shows that in Swaziland it is who is saying something that is more important than what is being said.
Swazi television news excludes the vast majority of people in the country from its news bulletins and it rarely includes stories about ordinary people. Generally, ordinary people are not featured unless they have been victims of misfortune.
The majority of the reports that are broadcast centre on the main business town of Manzini and the kingdom’s capital city Mbabane and the 40-km ‘corridor’ that connects these two.
About 72 per cent of Swazi people live in rural areas and they are not being represented in these bulletins. It is impossible for a television viewer to know what kinds of stories originating from outside Manzini and Mbabane are being missed and exactly how much rural people are at a disadvantage in terms of having their voices heard.
The quality of the journalism on the bulletins is low. Newsgathering in Swaziland (and I include radio and newspapers here) tends to be passive and the media rely on official sources such as the government, police and emergency services for their stories.
The television journalists over-rely on powerful elites as sources and journalists do not pro-actively find alternative sources to provide balance to stories. Reporters tend to receive information from a single source and re-present it unquestioningly in reports.
Journalists tend not to give background information to the stories, even those running from day to day. Instead, they opt for revisiting stories over a period of time, introducing new elements in each new episode. In this way committed viewers might be able to piece together the different parts of the story into a comprehensible whole. But each new episode tends to include only one source, thus there is no balance of views or attempt at interrogation of the powerful.
This demonstrates the biggest single advantage of the present television system to the existing elite of people who run the kingdom. Swazi journalists are unable to perform their vital democratic role, which is to examine what government is and is not doing and to provide the public with information, comment, analysis, criticism and alternative views. Instead, news reports are presented at face value and reporters are not allowed to ask questions that require people in positions of power to justify their statements or actions.
So what is the point of television news in Swaziland? Currently, broadcasters in Swaziland serve the interests of the ruling elites and not those of the people. They make sure that no criticism of the status quo in Swaziland gets on the airwaves and there is no reason to believe that this will change any time soon.
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