There is an old saying among the more cynical media watchers that there is no need to censor or impose state controls on journalists, because journalists will keep in line without coercion.
I was reminded of this when I was looking through a research report on political reporting in Swaziland.
I have written about His Master’s Voice, Political Reporting in Swaziland 2007 previously. The report published in June 2008 by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) – Swaziland chapter, is a fascinating expose of the weaknesses of political reporting in particular and journalism more generally in Swaziland.
The research reveals that journalists in Swaziland are not doing their jobs. One of the roles of the journalist is to give people clear information about what is going on around them. Another role is to hold those in power to account.
Swazi journalists fall down on both of these roles.
The research, written by Mary Ellen Rogers, shows that political reporting in the Swazi media is overwhelmingly dominated by the voices and views of government.
Groups with opposing views, NGOs and ordinary people hardly get a chance to have their voices heard.
According to research, government sources accounted for 57 per cent of all sources in political coverage. Government here refers to cabinet, ministry staff, MPs, senators, spokespeople and such like.
But when you take a broader definition of ‘government’ to include King Mswati III, the justice system, traditional authorities and parastatals, the dominance of government voices in political stories increases to 75 per cent.
The second biggest single group of sources after government is civil society, but this sector only accounts for 13 percent of all sources in political coverage. Civil society refers to sources such as educators, workers, ordinary citizens, business people and religious leaders.
The research reveals that ‘a typical political story is a story with one source and that source is from government’. Government spoke most often about development. The issues that government spoke about least were poverty, crime and social welfare.
Development was also a favoured topic for the king. When the king was heard in political coverage he was almost exclusively speaking about development issues. On occasion, he was captured speaking on interstate relations, economics and corruption. Just two stories captured the king speaking about HIV AIDS.
Swazi journalists also let down the people by failing to hold those in power to account. There is no questioning of those in authority and very little contextualising of events.
The research stated,
‘Reporters tended to take events at face value. That is, they rarely asked questions of relevant sources and scrutinized the underlying issues. This resulted in very superficial reporting that covered who, what, when, where but repeatedly ignored the how and the why of the event.
‘It was rare to find evidence of the reporter directly questioning sources. Typically, a political story would just summarise the source’s public statements.
‘Few stories displayed an effort by the journalist to pursue the source with follow-up questions or take questions to other relevant sources.’
The report says that this failure by journalists ‘was particularly the case for television and radio’. Personally, I think this is unsurprising since most broadcasting in Swaziland is state-controlled and that which isn’t (Channel Swazi and Voice of the Church) is indistinguishable from the others in that they vehemently support the status quo in Swaziland.
His Master’s Voice goes on to identify that few stories were properly contextualized.
‘It was clear from many stories that the reporter’s aim was to report the simple facts of an event. There was rarely an effort to go beyond these basic details to explain the backdrop against which the event occurred, conduct research, interview diverse sources, find connections to other relevant stories, events, or mention recurring patterns.
‘As such, political stories were mostly reported as isolated incidents, with no attempt to explain the significance of the event within the broader social context, examine the impacts and mention solutions.’
The standard of political journalism in Swaziland is clearly very poor. I think there are a number of reasons for this and mostly, these are cultural. Swaziland is not a questioning society; people seem content on believing what they are told, without understanding there is more than one way to look at an issue. You only have to look at the way people believe the words of bogus pastors in the kingdom to see this in action.
The education system in Swaziland doesn’t encourage research. Pupils learn facts and then reproduce them in their essays. Journalists do much the same thing in their reports.
These cultural deficiencies can be seen in all walks of life in Swaziland, so perhaps we shouldn’t single out journalists for special mention in this regard.
However, we do expect higher standards from people who call themselves ‘journalists’, since they are supposed to be representing the needs of ordinary people, especially, but not exclusively, when questioning those in power.
His Master’s Voice offers a couple of recommendations on how to improve the standard of political reporting in Swaziland. It says that working journalists and editors should be trained in areas such as conducting research, fact checking, interviewing sources, balancing stories and adding context and analysis to stories. There should also be educational programmes for the media on political issues and matters of governance.
Personally, I think there is an over emphasis on ‘training’ here. It seems like a ‘quick fix’ and doesn’t really tackle to deep-seated problems that are ingrained in Swazi culture.
To change culture takes generations – not a couple of week-long training workshops.
I have the full His Master’s Voice report as a PDF file. If you want a copy, email me here swazimedia@yahoo.com
See also
REPORTING AND THE SINGLE SOURCE
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