ADVERTISERS ‘CONTROL THE MEDIA’

An article in the Swazi Observer on Tuesday (6 November 2007) accused advertisers of being able to decide what is and what is not published in Swaziland newspapers.

The writer Mfankhona Mkambule accused some (unnamed) companies of having formed strategic partnerships with certain media outlets. Mkambule says that since the advertisers bring in the money, media outlets are afraid to upset them in case they take the money away.

‘In this way’, he writes, ‘the media does not expose their dirty linen. They tolerate it with a smile. In most cases, those who bribe the media with advertisements have skeletons in their closet. In order for the media to paint a good picture of the goings-on behind the scenes, it is imperative for them to dangle a carrot – and the hungry media would rather compromise journalistic ethics than letting it go.’

Mkambule gives no evidence to support his claims, but I have written before about what I think is the too-close relationship between the mobile phone company MTN and the newspapers (especially the Swazi Observer).

There is a bigger issue here than just whether one advertiser or another is keeping ‘dirty linen’ out of the newspapers.

The argument that is missed by Mkambule is that mass media can play a vital role in achieving development goals and contributing to social change but in reality there is little incentive for privately owned media groups to create development-type material if this threatens profits or works against the interests of business interests that the media might have,

Mass media that operates in a capitalist economy rely on advertising revenue for profit and the way advertisers chose where to spend their money amounts to a political discrimination; this is because advertisers are more interested in reaching people who have money to buy things.

The main influence on spending is income: the rich buy more of most things than the poor. So, the media are more interested in writing stories or producing radio and television programmes that would be attractive to people with money to spend, and attractive also to advertisers who wish to sell their goods and services to them.

Advertising provides the principal financial backing for commercial mass media across the world. Just about every commercial newspaper in the world gets more of its income from running adverts than from the price readers pay to buy the paper.

In order to make sure the money keeps rolling in from advertisers (and in the case of the Swaziland newspapers, this includes advertising from the government) the media tend to protect and promote the interests of the big companies and government departments that advertise.

This is why the media tend to support the general ruling economic and political interests in a country and suppress alternate views. This means that the media are more interested in profit making than in giving out public information.

A major problem with advertising-dominated media is that to achieve profitability media companies must maximize audiences and they therefore prefer to provide entertainment rather than ‘public interest’ material.

If you look at the survey I did of Swazi newspapers you can see how this works. In the Swazi Observer and the Times of Swaziland, the combined ‘sport’ and ‘entertainment and leisure’ categories (the most entertaining material in the newspapers) equal 44 percent of total space dedicated to editorial in the Observer and 40 percent in the Times.

The small size of the advertising market in Swaziland, combined with a substantial government share of total advertising expenditure, poses major problems for press proprietors, editors and journalists. Apart from the more obvious problems of repression and censorship, governments are able to sway editorial policy and news coverage, and indeed put out of existence newspapers which are seen as contradicting or questioning government policy, simply through the withdrawal of essential advertising revenue.

Although there is a partly free press in Swaziland, newspapers are heavily dependent on government advertising and this places the Press in a difficult financial position if it tries to protect the public against bad government. There is a fear that newspapers cannot ask uncomfortable questions for fear of losing advertising revenue and instead reproduce public relations material on behalf of the government. It is difficult to judge whether this is happening in Swaziland at the present time, but my observations of recent articles, especially in the Times of Swaziland, is that the newspaper is not concerned on this point.

In his article, Mkambule reminds us that the former Swaziland Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini threatened to withdraw advertising from one newspaper if it continued to publish negative things about the Government. ‘The bone of contention was that government could not financially support a media house that turned around to bite the hand that feeds it,’ Mkambule wrote.

Mkambule calls on the Minister of Public Service and Information S’gayoyo Magongo to hold an inquiry into the relationship of advertisers and the media they support. Quite what form this inquiry should take he does not say. But the truth is that in a market orientated capitalist society those with the money will always enjoy greater power than does who do not.