If you had to describe Swaziland’s newspapers to someone who had never seen them before, what would you say?
What are the main characteristics of the two daily and three weekend newspapers?
The most obvious thing to say is that they all have big headlines on top of (mostly) short reports. When you read the reports, you notice they often lack detail and avoid complicated explanation.
There are also lots of pictures and graphics (many of them in colour). Sometimes it isn’t really true to say that you are ‘reading’ the newspaper. Some days there can be more than 60 pictures in any one edition of the Times of Swaziland or the Swazi Observer. Because of the large number of pictures, it is probably more accurate to say you’re ‘looking at’ the paper.
Some days there is no news as such on the front page of the Swazi papers. Instead, you get headlines about stories that are contained inside the newspaper. There is always a big picture on the front page and sometimes a ‘taster’ for a competition that’s inside the newspaper.
The whole idea of the front page is to get people to notice the paper, pick it up and buy it. The front page is not really about journalism: it’s an advert for the paper itself.
If you can’t resist temptation and buy one of the newspapers what do find inside?
To find out more detail about the contents of the Observer and the Times, I did a survey of all editions in the month of May 2005 (twenty editions of each newspaper).
To start with the newspapers aren’t all about news. The number of pages per issue of the Times and Observer run from 36 to 48 and in the survey period the total number of pages in the Observer was 772 of which 144 were full pages of advertising (19 percent of total space), leaving 628 editorial pages to count. In the Times there were 816 pages in total of which 181 were full pages of advertising (22 percent of total space), leaving 635 editorial pages to count.
When you’ve got past the adverts you find that there is more ‘soft’ news reports rather than ‘hard’ news. They concentrate on sport, leisure, celebrity, entertainment and encouraging consumption.
There is relatively little ‘hard’ news, such as politics, business and information of significance to readers.
I found that there are more similarities than differences between the editorial content of the Observer and the Times.
Both newspapers place high importance on ‘soft’ or ‘non-serious’ material. For example, the combined ‘sport’ and ‘entertainment and leisure’ categories (the most non-serious material in the newspapers) equal 44 percent of total space in the Observer and 40 percent in the Times.
The Observer has up to ten pages of sport per day (the Times has up to seven pages) and five pages of entertainments (the Times generally has six pages). By contrast serious comment and analysis averages only one and a half pages per day (5 percent) in the Observer and one page per day (2 percent) in the Times.
The entertainments and sport rely heavily on news from overseas (news of European soccer is particularly prevalent in both papers). ‘Entertainment’ editorial includes news of overseas entertainments and in many cases it is not clear what the relevance the editorial has to Swazis as, for example, many of the movies and television shows that are featured will not be shown in Swaziland since the country has no cinemas and the TV shows do not air locally, not even on satellite.
Neither newspaper has reporters based outside of Swaziland so their ‘World’ news (which amounts to one or two pages per day for both newspapers) is supplied by international news agencies and in many cases the same news reports appear word for word in both newspapers (the same is true of world sport). In the Observer there is a greater concentration on news from other African countries and on some days an entire page is devoted solely to editorial from the continent.
Both newspapers were interested in the same kinds of stories, but the Observer gave greater prominence to the Monarchy, especially to reports (usually with several photographs, and sometimes the whole of page five) of the king or the king’s mother undertaking various official activities.
By concentrating on soft, ‘non serious’ news the Swazi press are doing the people of Swaziland a disservice. Swaziland is not a democracy and all broadcasting is controlled by the state to some extent.
To understand what is going on in their own nation and to have some influence and control over matters that affect them, people must have access to information and they must have space in the newspapers to debate matters of public importance. Access to information and debate can help people to prevent governmental excesses and breed trust in the democratic system.
Swaziland’s newspapers don’t really fulfill these roles. The Swazi Press doesn’t go in for serious, informed debate, preferring instead trivia, such as entertainment ‘news’ from the United States.
If I were a lawyer (which I am not) I might offer some mitigation on behalf of the Swazi journalists. Swaziland is not a democracy and there are examples in the past of journalists being harassed if they try to write and publish material that offends the king and his government. Who would blame the journalist for not taking the risk to write stories or articles that would be unpopular with the ruling elite?
There is not much that can be done about this so long as the king continues to hold absolute powers. The Swazi Constitution signed into law in 2006 does nothing to diminish these powers.
Maybe the international community could exert pressure on the kingdom to allow the media proper editorial freedom with legislation to protect and promote the public interest. This might at least encourage Swazi journalists to stop writing about trivial things and get down to the proper job of journalism.
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