One thing that shines out about journalists and their
editors in Swaziland as we come to the start of a new year is the deeply
cynical way they operate.
Swazi journalists claim to be upholders of fine ethical
traditions of honesty and inquiry, but instead they are often publishing lies
or playing with readers’ emotions to boost company profits.
There are only two newspaper groups in Swaziland, the Swazi Observer, which is in effect owned
by King Mwsati III, through the Tibiyo Taka Ngwane, a conglomerate of companies
he holds ‘in trust’ for the Swazi nation, and the commercially-independent Times of Swaziland group.
I am leaving out TV and radio journalists from this
discussion because nearly all of them work for the state-controlled SBIS radio
or Swazi TV. These stations come under direct editorial control of the
government of the day and their staffs are civil servants and not independent
journalists. The one radio station and one
TV
channel not under direct government control either carry no news or openly
support the king and the kingdom’s traditionalists.
The
Swazi Observer
is open about its role in the kingdom. From time to time the
editors
state in their papers that their job is to support the king and the
traditionalists come what may. We shouldn’t confuse this with support for the
government of the day, because as everyone knows the government has no power: that
rests with King Mswati, who is sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.
The
Swazi Observer
is honest in its purpose: although it doesn’t say it in so many words it is not
meant to be ‘journalism’; it is propaganda for the king. Even if readers miss
the occasional ‘mission statements’ from the editors they only have to read the
content of the
Swazi Observer and
Weekly Observer to see how the land
lies. Only this week the
Observer published what
it called the ‘philosophy’ of King Mswati.
This was neither a news story nor a feature / comment article;
it was simply a statement with a list of the King’s beliefs. The article began
with these words, ‘His Majesty King Mswati III, Ingwenyama yemaswati, believes in
dialogue, respect and honest engagement as a way to resolve any differences on
any issue.’
Anybody following events in Swaziland will
recognise the falsity of the statement.
Many people in Swaziland know the Observer is a propaganda rag and so don’t buy it. It is impossible
to get any independently-audited figures for newspaper sales in Swaziland, but
the evidence of our own eyes at shops and roadside news vendors suggests that
for every 10 copies the Observer
sells, the Times probably sells 15.
The Times of Swaziland
is published Monday to Friday. Its companions, the Swazi News comes out on Saturday and there is also a separate
title, the Times Sunday. In these
papers it is possible to find the work of the most cynical journalists and
editors.
They claim in their own columns to be upholders of
journalist standards of the highest order and go on public record to defend
themselves against complaints from critics. But the evidence shows us they are
nothing of the sort.
Here’s an example. Just before Christmas (2012) the
Times Sunday published
an article from a regular columnist that stated that when it came to gender-based
violence women abused men more than the other way round and ‘most’ women who were
beaten up by men brought it upon themselves. He then spent his entire article
attacking women and defending men. He went so far as to say that married women
who left abusive relationships were ‘bitches’.
After the article was published it generated an unprecedented
outcry from readers. The Times’ top
editors and the newspapers’ ‘readers’ representative’ (ombudsman) all leapt to
the writer’s defence.
The ombudsman (who is in fact a woman)
wrote
in the Times Sunday in response
to the critics that the newspaper was, ‘justified in strongly advocating our
own views on controversial topics provided that the readers are treated fairly
by making fact and opinion clearly distinguishable, not misrepresenting or
suppressing relevant facts and not distorting such facts.’
And, there’s the cynicism. The article was not based on any
‘facts’. In no country in the world are more women accused and convicted of
gender-based violence than men. Nor, is there evidence that ‘most’ women who are
attacked bring it upon themselves.
The
Times’ editors
took a similar line to the ombudsman on the article, highlighting their
beliefs that they were entitled to publish articles that generated debate and
to stop them doing so was to curtail freedom of speech.
But, if we follow the Times’
own ombudsman’s reckoning the article should never have been published because
it did not distinguish clearly between fact and opinion and it misrepresented
‘facts’. What the writer wrote was demonstrably not true.
This was an example of what I call ‘flat-Earth journalism’ –
the Times newspapers publish a lot of
this.
This is how it works: you get somebody to write that the
Earth is flat – it helps if he is so ignorant he doesn’t realise that he’s
ignorant and actually believes it. You give him 1,000 words to say why all
those people who disagree with him are wrong, devoid of intelligence, have
never read a book in their lives, they come from Botswana, etc. He doesn’t have
to give any facts, but he must argue strongly for his case. It helps greatly if
he can quote a verse or two from the Bible that he claims supports his stand.
Once the article is published and the complaints come in,
the writer can dismiss the complainants as ignorant, racists, donor-funded, neo-colonialists
etc. – or a combination of these. The editors can say the writer is entitled to
his views even if the newspaper doesn’t necessarily agree with them and the
writer can claim to be a beacon of honesty and he will stand up and say whatever
he believes in the name of media freedom, even under pain of death.
It’s all baloney of course. No matter how much a writer and the
editors huff and puff about it, the fact is that the Earth is not flat, it is
round.
So, what’s happening at the Times? We might conclude that the editors are incredibly stupid and
really believe the Earth is flat, or indeed they believe that more women really
do beat up men rather than the other way round. Therefore, the editors can’t
see what all the fuss from their critics is about. If this is the case, there
is not much hope for them, or for the readers of the Times.
However, if we assume they are not stupid, then they must be
cynical. The Times simply publishes
articles, no matter how devoid of fact or reasoning, so they can get a response
from readers – and that keeps them buying the papers day after day. Lots of
interest is generated and column centimetres of the paper are filled (at no
cost to the newspapers’ publisher).
This is something the Times
does all the time.
One example will suffice here. On 12 December 2012 the Times published a letter from a reader
calling for ‘rights’ for zombies because they were subjected to forced labour.
This letter provoked responses from other readers, including one that said, ‘zombies
do exist and the practice is widespread’.
I’d like to think this discussion was a spoof, but it was no
more devoid of fact or reason than the article on gender violence. So if the
gender article wasn’t a spoof, there’s no reason to assume the zombie letters
were either. This must lead us to the conclusion that the editors believe they
can publish any old nonsense in the Times,
so long as it gets a response.
So, although the practice shows intense disrespect for the
reader, it suggests that the journalists and editors at the Times are following a deliberate cynical
commercial policy.
The Times claims
it upholds journalism ethics by allowing unpopular or controversial topics to
be discussed, such as the one on gender. But, actually the Times newspapers stifle more discussion than they allow.
The most obvious example concerns the reason for Swaziland’s
decline in recent years. Anyone who studies the kingdom can see that major
factors in this decline are the activities of the monarchy (presently topped by
King Mswati and his mother) and the traditionalists who group around them. It
is possible to trace most of the kingdom’s economic, political and social
problems back to its feudal structure, with the king and his mum at the top of
the pile.
The only possible way to map a way forward for Swaziland is
to have a long, detailed, discussion about what has to change and why. The Times does not allow this discussion because
it is scared of King Mswati and it knows he will hurt the newspapers’
profitability if it does so.
We know this for a fact because in April 2007 the
Times Sunday published a minor criticism
of King Mswati, sourced from an international news agency. The king went
ballistic and told the
Times
publisher Paul Loffler he would close the paper down unless people responsible
for the publication at the paper were sacked and the newspaper published an
abject apology to the king.
These
things were done.
The
Swazi Observer
is at least honest in publicly nailing its colours for the king to the mast,
but the
Times is not. Loffler, whose
family is from Namibia
,
is on record saying in a South African newspaper that Swaziland doesn’t
need democracy, but you won’t hear him say that in his own papers. Could this
be because to let this be generally known would be bad for business? People unhappy
with the propaganda in the
Observer would
not to buy the
Times instead because
they would know both papers were as bad as each other.
It is not only in the area of comment that the journalists
are cynical. Defending the gender article, the Times’ ombudsman said the papers upheld the kingdom’s journalism
codes of ethics. Article one of the code states, ‘The duty of every journalist is to write and
report, adhere to and faithfully defend the truth. A journalist should make
adequate inquiries, do cross-checking of facts in order to provide the public
with unbiased, accurate, balanced and comprehensive information.’
Not only
does the Times publish inaccurate
articles, it also tells its readers outright lies.
Here’s just
one example from the past year to illustrate this. On 21
October 2012 the Times Sunday published
a report about a petition sent by a group in the United Kingdom called the
Swaziland Vigil to the UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
According to
the Times Sunday, the petition read
in part, ‘Exiled Swazis and supporters urge you to put pressure on (the Swazi
government) to allow political freedom, freedom of the press, rule of law,
respect for women and affordable AIDS drugs in Swaziland.’
The
newspaper inserted the words ‘the Swazi government’ into the petition to make
it seem that it was Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini and his cabinet that was
being criticised.
In fact, the
petition
sent to
Cameron actually read, ‘Petition to the British Government: Exiled Swazis and
supporters urge you to put pressure on absolute monarch King Mswati III to
allow political freedom, freedom of the press, rule of law, respect for women
and affordable AIDs drugs in Swaziland.’
The Swaziland
Vigil made it very clear that it was criticising ‘absolute monarch King Mswati
III’. The Times Sunday deliberately distorted the
petition to deflect criticism away from King Mswati – or put another way, it
told a clear unambiguous lie to its readers.
Once this
lie became public there was not a squeak from the Times’ editors, or the papers’ ombudsman, defending their right to
deceive their readers. Instead, they kept their collective heads down and
pretended nothing had happened and hoped it would all blow over.
Which for
the most part it did.
This
behaviour demonstrates that editors cannot be trusted to tell their readers the
truth, even at the most basic level.
So what
hope is there for the future of journalism in Swaziland? Not much if truth be
told.
While the
editors remain cynical and journalists are content to do their bosses bidding
nothing can change. New journalists entering the job (we can’t call it a
‘profession’ or ‘calling’ in Swaziland) who genuinely believe in the
journalists’ code of ethical conduct will soon find the rotten elements
presently in control driving them out: either literally, by sacking them, or by
making life so hard for them they have to quit or sink to the same depths as
their colleagues.
That’s what
cynicism does, like cancer it rots away at a healthy body until it’s completely
eaten up and it can do nothing else but die.
