POVERTY OF SWAZI JOURNALISM 1

The plight of two impoverished children in Swaziland has highlighted big failings in the Swazi press.

The two boys, aged about seven years (nobody seems sure of their exact ages), were first featured in the Swazi Observer last Tuesday (20 November 2007) when the newspaper reported the children ‘try to survive under horrendous conditions’ with no family to support them.

Each morning in their ragged school uniforms they walk the 10 kilometres from their home to school where ‘they cut a strange picture among the sea of pupils at the school’.

The boys were reported to often go without meals for days.

The Observer went into overdrive with the story following it up several times over the next few days. By Saturday (24 November 2007) individual people and companies had made donations of food, clothing, bicycles and cash. The head of a security company had decided to adopt the boys (although what rights the boys had in this matter is not stated).

By Saturday each boy had a bank account with E3,000 in it. To put this into some context, 70 per cent of the population of Swaziland live on less than E7 (one US dollar) a day.

On the face of it this is a heart-warming story of kind people helping out some children who are in desperate circumstances. I don’t want to criticise people for being generous to the children but I do think the Observer has rather missed the point with the story.

As I said earlier, 70 per cent of the population of Swaziland or about 700,000 people live on less than one US dollar a day. That pittance of an income means most people in Swaziland go hungry most of the time. About 66 per cent of the population is unable to meet basic food needs, while 43 per cent live in chronic poverty. Or put another way, the two boys featured in the Observer this week are not really much different from anyone else.

Not for the first time the Swazi media have failed to put a news story in context. The Observer makes these two boys out to be an exception to the general lifestyles in Swaziland, when in fact they are the rule.

The Observer editor should have been able to make this connection himself if only he read his own newspaper. The two boys were not the only stories of poverty in the newspaper this week.

On Monday (19 November 2007) the day before the story about the two boys broke the Observer carried an article by Pastor Ken Jefferson where he tells the story of a gogo (grandmother) in a remote rural community who was looking after many orphan children in the community. When Pastor Jefferson visited the community the gogo pleaded for food for the children. ‘The look of relief as she was handed some milk, some mealie-meal and some oil was only too evident, and she seemed possessed of new strength,’ he wrote.

The Weekend Observer (24 November 2007) also carried a report from a different rural community where ‘starvation attacks many families’. The Weekend Observer reported, ‘So serious is the situation that poverty has affected all and sundry at Nginamadolo. Even the chief’s inner council survive from hand to mouth. There is no food on the table.’

Poverty is endemic in Swaziland, but to read the newspapers you would think it was an isolated incident. The Weekend Observer in an editorial comment about the two boys reminded its readers that 70 per cent of the population lived on less than a dollar a day, but it made no connection between this statistic and the boys’ plight. Instead, the newspaper believed the issue was about the lack of government grants for school uniforms that would have benefited the boys.

The media academic Prof Guy Berger of Rhodes University in research on newspaper reporting of poverty reminds us that poverty is not an event but a process. By that he means that newspapers cover poverty as if it was an event – something that just happens – rather than a process – something that is achieved over a period of time. The Observer reports the two boys as an event, when in fact they are victims of a process over which they have no control.

Poverty in Swaziland is not natural. Despite what the Swaziland Prime Minister A T Dlamini likes to tell us, poverty is not an act of God and prayer is no solution.

The website, Rural Poverty in Swaziland, has this to say about why people in Swaziland are poor.

‘Poor economic growth, a rapidly expanding population and an increasingly uneven distribution of factors are factors that contribute to the growing number of Swaziland’s rural poor people. Other factors aggravating poverty are the rise in unemployment, the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the fact that large parts of the country
are vulnerable to drought and climate change. Environmental fragility is beginning to affect food security. Over grazing has caused soil depletion, while drought and periodic floods have become persistent problems.

Smallholder farmers living on Swazi Nation Land face a number of obstacles that prevent them from breaking out of poverty. The low agricultural productivity of the land can be attributed to a number of factors including difficult road access, poor linkages to markets, limited availability of irrigation water and vulnerability to climate change.'

Swazi journalist would do well to think about this when next they ‘report’ on poverty.


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POVERTY OF SWAZI JOURNALISM 2

SWAZILAND HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES

There was a lovely picture of the Swaziland Prime Minister A T Dlamini getting on to a plane on the front page of the Times of Swaziland yesterday (22 November 2007).

He’s off to represent King Mwsati III at the Commonwealth Summit in Kampala, Uganda.

The king can’t make it because he is in ‘seclusion’. Each year at about this time King Mswati III goes out of the public eye. No one is quite sure what he gets up to in seclusion because it’s a ‘traditional’ matter and to ask questions about it is considered to be ‘unSwazi’.

It’s a pity he won’t be at the Commonwealth Summit because he’ll miss the latest condemnation of human rights abuses in Swaziland.

And I suspect the rest of us in Swaziland will miss it too, because this isn’t the sort of report that the Swazi media like to make available to the king’s subjects in Swaziland

Even before the summit has properly started Swaziland has been criticised for the way the government controlled by King Mswati III permits the police to commit acts of brutality.

Human Rights Watch, in a media statement said, ‘the government of King Mswati III of Swaziland continued to permit the national police force to commit brutal acts with impunity, including detention, torture and extra-judicial killing of anti-monarchists and opposition members.’

Human Rights watch said that the human rights records of Commonwealth countries such as Swaziland were also at odds with the summit's theme of ‘political, economic and human development.’

Reed Brody, counsel with Human Rights Watch, said, ‘Any serious discussion at the Commonwealth summit should recognize that human rights violations are inimical to sustainable development.

Brody added, ‘Commonwealth members need to hold leaders accountable if their abusive human rights policies thwart the development of their own countries.’

Human Rights Watch is a United States-based international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights.

It produces research reports on violations of international human rights norms as set out by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other internationally-accepted human rights norms.

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POLICE ‘MURDER’ – NEW EVIDENCE

SWAZI GOVERNMENT HITS ITS CRITICS

Government departments are punishing Swazi newspapers that write critical articles about them by withholding advertisements.

‘The government is the biggest single advertiser and wields enormous power in the small advertising market. Government regularly uses this power to control media content,’ it was revealed at a workshop held in Swaziland.

A panel of experts in the African Media Barometer workshop heard that censoring the news to protect advertisers has become increasingly common in Swaziland.

A report on the workshop reveals, ‘Recently the Ministry of Health ran a series of announcements in the Observer, but refused to run them in the Times. When the newspaper confronted the Ministry they said they withheld the advertisements because they were unhappy with the Times’ criticism of the Ministry over the public health crisis. The Observer has had similar experiences of government withholding advertisements on particular issues. This is not the result of top-level policy, but rather “just depends on which government department it is”’

Government departments can get away with this because the newspapers rely on advertising and a large proportion of that advertising income comes from the government. The advertising market in Swaziland is too small to sustain many media outlets. Government and parastatals are the big advertisers and if the were removed from the market, the media would barely survive. Advertising from private businesses is rare and ad hoc.

The report adds, ‘And since the government and parastatals are the biggest advertisers, this means information critical of government and public bodies can be withheld from the public.’

The workshop, which was held in July 2007, also heard that other advertisers are also protected by newspaper owners. The report states, ‘Recently the Times rejected an investigative piece that dug up dirt about a major advertiser.’ The owner of the Times made the editor shelve the article.

This kind of behaviour led the Media Institute of Southern Africa – Swaziland Chapter (MISA) to conclude that ‘media owners are more concerned about protecting their business than fighting for media freedom.’


See also

ADVERTISERS ‘CONTROL THE MEDIA’

TELEVISION MISUSES CHILDREN

I wrote on Monday about how newspapers regularly misuse children in their reports and how reporters deny children their rights.

Newspapers are not the only culprits as this news report from Channel S (Channel Swazi) news shows.

I have some problems telling you about the story (which denied a child victim of rape her human rights) without committing the same gross errors as Channel S, but the basic details are these.

The main item on the news last Wednesday night (14 November 2007) was about some children who had been raped at a school. During the bulletin the reporter identified who the rapist was and interviewed one of the child victims. To protect her identity, the child had her face obscured by a black strip for most of the interview but she would have been clearly identifiable to anyone in her community (which was named) by her voice and the clothes she wore. But worse than this, because of a technical mistake the black strip on her face was removed before the end of the interview and her face was clearly visible on screen for several seconds.

Then it became clear that the police had not arrested or charged the man the news report had said was the rapist and it seemed had no intention of doing so.

To recap: Channel S falsely named a man as a rapist when he had not been convicted of the crime and identified and interviewed a child victim of rape.

The report violated the Swazi National Association of Journalists (SNAJ) Code of Conduct. By accusing the man of being a rapist Channel S broke Article 5 of the code, which states, ‘A journalist should guard against defamation, libel, slander and obscenity.’

Channel S may also have broken the same article which goes on the state, ‘A journalist shall seek consent of the survivor before taking pictures or conducting interviews with survivors of sexual offences. In cases of minors, the consent of their guardians shall be sufficient.’ We can’t be sure that the parents or guardian of the child who was interviewed gave consent. Certainly, no adult related to the child was featured in the news item.

Channel S broke Article 15 of the code which states, ‘Journalists shall avoid identifying survivors of sexual assault or give any information that may lead to the identification of the survivor.’ Channel S is guilty by interviewing the child on camera and showing her full face at the end of the interview. Even if the dreadful mistake of showing her face had not happened, the girl would still have been identifiable by her voice and clothing. Also, the item was recorded (not broadcast live) so there was an opportunity to correct the mistake before the news bulletin was aired.

So how should Channel S have reported the story? The station was perfectly within its rights to bring such an important crime as rape to the public’s attention, but it needed to do so without violating the rights of the child involved.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has developed guidelines to support media workers who have to deal with children and young people. The IFJ advocates media training to recognise that children’s rights are important and to reflect upon the social responsibilities they carry when they research, write and produce children’s stories. Media houses need to develop practical strategies for dealing with complex issues and keeping an appropriate balance between the protection of children’s rights and journalistic independence and freedom of expression.

The IFJ advocates media training, but the evidence so far in Swaziland suggests such an approach will have a limited impact. For example, a three-day workshop on responsible reporting of children was held in Swaziland for media practitioners and others. It received extensive coverage in the Swazi media and codes of practice were published, but the message has not travelled from the classroom to the newsroom.

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POOR PICTURE OF CHILDREN

AIDS PUTS SWAZILAND ON THE BRINK

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again – if you really want to know what’s going on in Swaziland, don’t bother with the Swazi media. Look instead at what’s being reported aborad.

I was reminded of this yet again this week by an article in South Africa’s Mail and Guardian newspaper about the true picture of HIV / AIDS in Swaziland.

The article written by two academics, Professor Alan Whiteside and Scott Naysmith at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, details the devastating effect AIDS is having in Swaziland.

Here are some of the main points of the article.

- A survey undertaken in 2006, estimated that 220 000 people, 19% of the population, are infected with HIV. If this prevalence were applied to South Africa and the United States, then nine million South Africans and 56-million Americans would be infected.

- AIDS kills half of the children dying under the age of five. Swazi citizens born in 1993 could expect to live 60 years; today Swaziland has the lowest life expectancy in the world at just 31.3 years.

- There are already 130 000 orphans and vulnerable children, a number projected to increase to 200 000 by 2010. As elderly care­givers die, the oldest children take over without a support network. Sadly, Swazis have come to see the circumstances afflicting a third of their nation’s children as ordinary and inevitable -- an 'abnormal normality' that reflects a society with few options.

- Many Swazi households are forced to cope with livelihood failure, caused by drought, falling agricultural production and a declining GDP. The number of Swazis 'skipping meals' has increased; poor nutrition hastens the onset of AIDS and puts individuals at greater risk of infection. In 2007 40% of all Swazis require food aid, yet the government recently decided to cultivate cassava crops for bio-fuel production.

- Swazi women and girls shoulder the burden of the disease and are the most vulnerable to infection. A shocking 49% of women aged between 25 and 29 are HIV-positive, reflecting the low status of women.

The research that the Mail and Guardian article is based on can be downloaded here

In Swaziland, meanwhile, the Prime Minister tells us that the way to overcome AIDS is to pray to God.

See also

SWAZILAND IS ON ITS KNEES

SWAZILAND ‘SHAMES AFRICA’

Swaziland shames the rest of Africa when it comes to violating the rights of journalists.

That was the first public declaration made by a new African journalist’ organisation formed this month (November 2007).

The Federation of African Journalists was launched at a congress in Abuja, Nigeria, on the theme of Building a Strong and United Voice for African Journalists. Participants from 20 countries in Africa attended the congress.

The Federation’s first public statement was to issue a strong protest over African governments that jail journalists and encourage a culture of impunity by failing to investigate violent attacks on media staff. 'These governments shame Africa and make a mockery of commitments to pluralism and democracy,’ said the Federation, in a media statement issued on 15 November 2007.

The Federation called on the African Union and the United Nations Human Rights Commissioners to investigate, expose, and take appropriate action against states violating the fundamental rights of the people of Africa.

In particular, the Federation called on the African Union to investigate the actions of Swaziland and other governments including Somalia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Niger, Gambia, Tunisia and Egypt where there have been credible reports of serious violations of journalists’ rights.

The Federation of African Journalists is part of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which represents more than 600,000 journalists in 120 countries worldwide.

Jim Boumelha, IFJ President, who was present at the conference hosted by the Nigeria National Union of Journalists, the continent’s largest journalists’ group, said, ‘Journalists are angry at the way governments and authorities abuse media. They are determined to fight for their rights and they want a single, unified Federation that will speak for all African journalists and that will ensure actions to support African journalism are led and driven by African journalists themselves.’

BIG BROTHER SHOW CONS AFRICANS

Big Brother Africa 2 (BBA2), the ‘reality’ television show that went on and on and on for three months is finally over.

The Swazi media, particularly the newspapers and mostly the Times of Swaziland, got carried away by the show in which 12 young men and women were put together in a house, made to undertake tasks, had cameras watching them 24 hours a day, and then had viewers decide which ones of them they wanted to evict from the house. This went on and on for 98 days until there was only one ‘housemate’ standing. The winner got to go away with 100,000 US dollars (about 700,000 Swazi emalengeni).

Swazi journalists such as Nathi Gule, who writes a television review in the Times every Friday, thought BBA2 was the best thing since television was invented.

Although the media in Swaziland fell for BBA2, journalists elsewhere in Africa were more aware of that BBA2 was a confidence trick on ordinary Africans.

Daniel Soetan, writing last Saturday (17 November 2007) in the Nigerian newspaper Leadership, compared BBA2 with a previous ‘reality’ TV show called Gulder Ultimate Search. Soetan writes.

‘[Gulder Ultimate Search] was a TV Reality Show that x-rayed the true day-to-day life of average African people.

‘Gulder Ultimate Search was devoid of luxury, flamboyancy etc. No rooms fully air-conditioned, no gas cookers, and other quirths that an average African cannot afford.

‘How will you get an air-conditioner when your ordinary ceiling, standing or even table fan, as the case may be, would require generator to roll the blades?

‘What gas cooker? Can an average Nigerian afford it? My neighbours, even with the kerosene cooking stoves, still have to use charcoal burner to cook oftentimes. The poor family can’t cope with the hike in the price of kerosene.

‘In an hotel one day, during the early days of the just concluded Big Brother Africa, I watched the housemates testing the beautiful new clothes that had just been delivered to them by the organisers. Ask the participants of the Gulder Ultimate Search.

‘The BBA reality show, to an extent, suppresses the truth about the real African. How can you lock up some youths and have them live in a fake world? They briefly enjoy luxury, comfort, a high life style and rich nutritious food that some of them do not enjoy in their real world, only to evict them back into their real world of poverty and hustling.

‘They'll come out more angry, frustrated and aggressive than they went in with so much impatience and greed because they simply desire that it continues to be like it was in the Big Brother House.’

I agree with most of what Daniel Soetan writes but I think he misses an important point. BBA2 wasn’t meant to be about ‘average’ Africans. BBA2 went out on the satellite channel DSTV, a channel that most Swazis don’t watch because they can’t afford to. In Swaziland about 70 per cent of the population exist on less than one US dollar a day.

BBA2 is targeted at a very particular audience of young people. To be attractive to sponsors and advertisers the audience need to be in well paying jobs and have money to spend on the goods and services advertisers want to sell.

Advertisers who use television have trouble reaching younger adults, so BBA2 was aimed specifically at these kinds of people. BBA2 wants the audience to relate to the participants so they chose men and women to take part who come from a very narrow social demographic.

The 12 housemates ranged in ages from 21 to 30-years old, but most of them were aged 23 to 28. They didn’t have run-of-the-mill jobs in the real world. Two described themselves as ‘authors’, one was a model and actress, another was a fashion designer and yet another was a ‘radio personality’. This range of occupations is hardly typical of the average African.

Only countries with people who have money to attract advertisers were allowed to take part. Swazis were not invited to audition for a place in the house because not enough people in the kingdom subscribe to DSTV. Swazis are just too poor.

I’ll leave the final word for today on BBA2 to Ambrose Nuwagira, writing in the New Vision newspaper, Uganda.

‘What has this show portrayed? That life is all about manipulation, hypocrisy, and exploitation, whereby the most clinical in these will always win. This is a blatant lie.

‘To the African child, the biggest question in the last 98 days has been what can an African do for $100,000? The answers were just manifesting on the TV screens; hatred, envy, greed and infidelity.

‘There is absolutely nothing African about big brother.

‘Big brother is a sign of moral degeneration, greed, and gluttony. Africans have a sense of decency, shame, honour, dignity and moral sensibility. These are two contrasting situations. Now that they have broken the codes of decency, have made adultery look attractive and, of recent, portrayed fidelity as insignificant, what will be the next item on stage in an era where HIV/AIDS rates are increasing and vices like homosexuality trying to hold ground? Big Brother Africa portrays high corporate social irresponsibility and has offered our society a disservice.’

See Also

WATCHING BIG BROTHER

READING BIG BROTHER

CLOSURE THREAT TO ‘TIMES’

The Times of Swaziland came close to being forced to close earlier this year after it published a report critical of King Mswati III.

This news has emerged from a recently published report looking at media freedom in Swaziland.

The Times was threatened with closure unless it published an apology after it reproduced a news report from an international news agency, Afrol.

The Afrol article (which can be read in full here) gave details of an International Monetary Fund report on Swaziland.

It said, ‘Swaziland is increasingly paralysed by poor governance, corruption and the private spending of authoritarian King Mswati III and his large royal family. The growing social crisis in the country and the lessening interest of donors to support King Mswati’s regime has also created escalating needs for social services beyond the scale of national budgets.’

Such open criticism of the king is not allowed in Swaziland (not even in so-called independent newspapers like the Times Sunday). On the Thursday (22 March 2007) following publication an ‘unreserved apology’ to the king was published on the front page of the Times of Swaziland (repeated in the following week’s Times Sunday). The apology signed by both the publisher and managing editor of the Times Group said the article ‘was disparaging to the person of His Majesty in its content, greatly embarrassed him and should not have passed editorial scrutiny.’

It went on, ‘Our newspapers take great care with matters regarding the monarch, being conscious always of the unbreakable link of the King with the Nation. What occurred is reprehensible and we will renew our vigilance in editorial matters with the utmost vigour.’

To make absolutely certain that there was no doubt of the newspaper group’s subservience to the King, it finished the apology, ‘Once again your Majesty, our sincere and humble apologies.’

Now, a report from African Media Barometer, which is based on a workshop conducted with media experts in Swaziland, states that the Times was threatened with closure over the publication of the report. Details are sketchy, but the background to the incident appears to be that the publisher of the Times was summoned by Royal authorities and ordered to make the apology. Fearful of a demand to close the newspaper, he did as he was told

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SWAZI MEDIA TOE THE LINE

POOR PICTURE OF CHILDREN

Swazi journalists and their employers need to reassess their commitment to the ethical reporting of children. There is a clear gap between the ethical aspirations of journalists in Swaziland and the actual work they do.

This is one of the main findings of research I did into the way Swaziland’s newspapers use photographs of children.

I surveyed all Swaziland’s daily and weekend newspapers for eight weeks October to December 2006. This was a total of 56 editions of the daily newspapers The Times of Swaziland and the Swazi Observer; the Saturday newspapers The Weekend Observer and the Swazi News; and the Times Sunday,

I used the Swaziland National Association of Journalists (SNAJ) Code of Conduct as a guide to what should and should not be published.

The code is meant to ensure that journalists stick to the highest ethical standards, professional competence and good behaviour in carrying out their duties. Its main concern is that members of the media should conduct themselves with a high sense of responsibility without infringing the rights of individuals and society in general.

I was particularly interested in the way minors were depicted in photographs. Perhaps, the biggest area for concern with photography in all the newspapers in Swaziland is the depiction of minors, especially the issues of sexual activity and identification.

Among the examples I found was a news report that detailed a house fire in which a school pupil’s belongings were destroyed. In the course of the report a claim is made that the pupil was having an affair with one of her teachers (the pupil’s age is not given). The pupil is not named and her mother agrees to be interviewed by the paper so long as she is not identified. The report has a picture, clearly posed, of the mother with some of the remains of clothing that was burnt. Although the mother’s face has a black sticker across the eyes she is clearly identifiable by her clothes and her location. Anyone with knowledge of the location would be able to identify her and her daughter (Swazi Observer 22 November, 2006 p6).

A different newspaper states that a 14-year-old girl is selling herself for sex to get pocket money because her mother will not provide her with pants. She is not identified by name (her mother is described as a maid and the location in which she works is given). The girl is interviewed by the paper (it is not stated but it seems as if she was not interviewed with an adult present). The words used to describe the girl sexualise her. ‘Dressed in her black stockings complemented with an above the knee mini skirt, the girl stood out from the rest of her friends as someone who has been “enlightened” about life more than anything’ In the report, the girl describes how she had sex with a kombi driver and when her mother found out she severely beat her. The girl was also was also caned 15 times at her school. The report has a picture of the girl in her miniskirt talking with the newspaper’s reporter. The girl’s face is blacked out but he would be easily recognisable by anyone in her locality (Times Sunday 2 October, 2006 p5).

Another report is about a standard five primary school pupil (aged14) who is seven months pregnant but will still write her final year examinations. The girl’s mother is interviewed and gives an account of how the daughter got pregnant. The mother blames a local church, which encouraged children to attend services. It was after one of these services that she had sex with her boyfriend. The newspaper uses false names in the report to protect the family’s identity but a picture of the girl’s mother (with eyes blacked out) clearly identifies her by her clothes. There might also be a crucial mistake in the photograph’s caption, which appears to have included the mother’s real name (Times of Swaziland 24 November 2006 p5).

The photograph of two innocent children was included in a report about children aged between five years to fifteen working as prostitutes. The newspaper takes a file picture, which shows two brothers playing together. They have no connection with child prostitution and appear to have been used in the report simply because they are children. Mysteriously, the caption begins with the words ‘Naked truth’ (although both boys are fully clothed) and goes on to read ‘a boy captured carrying his younger brother while playing at Mpolonjeni area in the Lubombo region early in the year (Swazi News 4 November 2006 p12)

A total of 32 children were victims of robbery at the Christian rehabilitation centre. Two men assaulted and hacked some of the children. A newspaper report describes the children as ‘still traumatised as a result of the ordeal’. Two boys are quoted giving accounts of their experiences. Two pictures (head and shoulders) are used and both have eyes blacked out. Ages of the children are not given but an estimate would be about 12 years old (Times of Swaziland 22 November 2006 p2).

A picture of the injured back of a six-year-old boy is pictured to accompany a report that his step mother ‘brutally beat’ him. The mother is identified by name, location of residence and age but the report also states ‘The boy, whose identity shall be protected, attends a local school’. On p2 there is also a picture of the mother inside a police van seated with her daughter who has her faced blurred out. The mother is clearly identifiable and by extension so is her daughter. The reporter also attempted to interview the boy but reported ‘An attempt to speak to him proved futile as he appeared traumatised and seemed to fear his stepmother’. In contradiction of this, the reporter then quotes the boy at some length. There is reason to be sceptical about this quote since the boy uses sophisticated language that is unusual for six year olds. He is quoted as saying ‘I told her [his mother] that my friends would attest that I was in class the whole day’) (Times of Swaziland 18 October 2006 p1).

The picture of the six-year-old boy used to illustrate the report on 18 October 20067 is taken out of the file to illustrate a two-page spread on corporal punishment of children in Swaziland (Times of Swaziland 31 October 2006 p8)

All of these news items misuse children. They do not recognise that children have a special place in journalism codes of conduct because they have special needs and require special protections within society. Most adults are capable of deciding what involvement they want to have with the media and can make informed decisions as to the extent of their cooperation.

Children have neither the knowledge nor the experience to make such a decision. At the point at which journalists are gathering material for their news reports there is no equality between the journalists and the child and where there is a power imbalance there is potential for exploitation.

One possible major reason why there is a failure on the part of journalists to adhere to their own code of ethics is ideological. One cannot be surprised that journalists do not respect the rights of children when the state does not respect them either.

ETHICAL JOURNALISM IS VITAL

This blog is mostly about the ethical standards of journalism in Swaziland.

It is necessary to have a blog like this because media academics and commentators both in Swaziland and in Africa generally have identified many shortcomings in journalism. In Swaziland senior media practitioners identify the kingdom’s media as partisan, inaccurate and generally unprofessional.

A workshop of civic society stakeholders held in September 2005, which attempted to measure the performance of the media in Swaziland reported that news media lacked credibility and many people saw journalists as lacking in education and experience.

In Africa more generally newspapers have been described as very unprofessional, highly biased, and sensational with exaggerated reports published out of context. This situation has driven one senior media academic to conclude that the independent press in Africa has apparently thrown all ethical norms overboard. Therefore, codes of ethics are necessary so that journalists can stay on the right track.

Swaziland is not unique in Africa in having a code of ethics, nor do the clauses that make up the code differ much from those in existence elsewhere in Africa. Most codes cover truthfulness, fairness, impartiality, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, invasion of privacy, trauma, stereotyping and social responsibility.

Leading the campaign to improve ethical standards of journalism is the Swaziland National Association of Journalists (SNAJ), which has a membership of 150 of the estimated 200 journalists working in the kingdom.

In 2002, SNAJ developed and approved a code of conduct to try to ensure professional standards were maintained by all journalists practicing in the country.

The code was updated in 2005 to include clauses on the coverage of HIV/AIDS and gender issues. However, no organisation has been created to ensure the code of ethics is adhered to, so SNAJ currently relies on willing editors in newsrooms to sensitise journalists about the code. SNAJ has also embarked on an awareness campaign to educate its members about the code.

The code is meant to ensure that members adhere to the highest ethical standards, professional competence and good behaviour in carrying out their duties. Its overriding concern is that members of the media should conduct themselves with a high sense of responsibility without infringing the rights of individuals and society in general.

There are eight articles of the code which concern themselves with the personal responsibility of the journalist and these cover such matters as conflict of interest (do not accept bribes), plagiarism; protecting confidential sources; under no circumstances suppressing news (unless it borders on issues of national security); allowing a fair opportunity for organizations or individuals to respond to issues raised in publications; using ethical means to secure information and photographs; respecting embargoes and encouraging journalists to advise a survivor of a sexual offence to go for counselling.

The remaining nine articles cover areas including the public’s right to information (which is unbiased, accurate, balanced and comprehensive); respect for privacy; respect for national and ethnic values (not originating material which encourages discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, colour, creed, gender or sexual orientation); publishing corrections to inaccurate or misleading reports; separating comment from fact; avoiding the publication of speech that might promote hatred; avoiding the identification of survivors of sexual assault; protecting the rights of minors; exercising tact and sensitivity when dealing with people in grief.; avoiding misleading and sensational headlines and the reporting of people with HIV and AIDS.

In Swaziland there is not yet one single body that exists to enforce the code and each media house has developed its own professional standards. For instance, the Times of Swaziland has created an internal ombudsman to address concerns of readers and sanction offending journalists. The Swazi Observer has its own internal structures to address concerns raised by readers.

But the experiences of working with the code of conduct are not good. In a survey I did of the Swazi press in 2006 I discovered constant breaches of the SNAJ code of conduct. These breaches were in every one of SNAJ’s 19 clauses. They ranged in intensity from relatively minor infringements of fairness (apportioning blame in reports of traffic accidents), and clear bias in reporting on activities of MPs, to very severe examples of hate speech (homosexuals should be considered lower than animals).

The most striking aspect of the infringements was the almost casual disregard for the codes. For example, Article 5, which deals with privacy, states clearly that ‘intrusions into a person’s private life can only be justified when done in the public interest’. The ‘public interest defined as ‘all matters pertaining to and promoting public safety, security, health and general well being of society’ (SNAJ Code Definitions). This article of the code was casually disregarded all the time.

For example there was a report of a school student who was forced to drop out of school; another report that was conjecture on why a man committed suicide, speculation over the reasons for a possible suicide (with a photograph of a woman sobbing as she narrates her ordeal); a woman who spoke to reporter on condition of anonymity has her photograph published (she has her eyes backed out but she is clearly identifiable by her clothes and her location. It is impossible to justify any of these reports on the grounds of public interest as defined above.

My survey is not the only evidence that ethical journalism in Swaziland is poor.

A News Diet Study of the Swazi newspapers conducted by the Media Institute of Southern Africa – Swaziland Chapter (MISA) in 2006 discovered ‘serious ethical violations’ taking place in newspapers.

It found almost half the violations occurred in stories about child abuse or gender-based violence where the report failed to protect the victim and / or trivialised the event. MISA concludes, ‘This raises questions about the level of awareness among journalists of the need to report these issues responsibly and sensitively and, in particular, the standard of editing in the newspapers.’

How do we improve the ethical standards of journalism in Swaziland? The answer is very difficult and cannot be answered in a single essay. – that will take an entire blog.

RADIO NEWS NOT FOR THE PEOPLE

Radio Swaziland news fails as a medium for news and information and instead serves only the interests of the Swazi Royal Family and the king’s government.

These are the main conclusions from a survey of Radio Swaziland English Service evening news bulletins.

The bulletins which run for 10 minutes in the evenings are broadcast at 6pm and repeated word for word at 7pm.

To research what news items the bulletins contained I did a survey of the 6pm bulletin for five days (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) spread over a two week period in November 2007.

The bulletins are unusual in radio terms because they do not contain any news reporting as such. Instead a single news reader announces the news from a script. Often the reader announces in flat tones which makes even the most potentially interesting report sound like a death notice. Nowhere in the bulletins are there any ‘on-the-spot’ reports from journalists at the scene where news happened.

All this makes listening to Radio Swaziland News a very uncomfortable and boring experience.

The news items covered are not very interesting either.

In my survey I counted the first six items in the news bulletin, making a total of 30 from across the five days. Of these 30 only three reports in the entire period were not about the Royal Family or government ministries.

As an example, here is the running order for the news on Thursday 8 November 2007. The bulletin started with a report from the Ministry of Enterprise and Employment that an overseas’ company may set up a factory in Swaziland to manufacture bags. This was followed by reports from the Ministry of Housing, the Ministry for Tourism, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Public Services and the Ministry of Public Works.

In all the above cases the ‘news’ report was mostly an announcement about something positive that the ministry was doing.

It is said by media observers in Swaziland that all stations under the control of Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Service (SBIS), which includes Radio Swaziland English Service, have a definite hierarchy that must be followed when it comes to presenting the news. It runs something like this: stories about the King always lead, followed by the Prime Minister, Cabinet and then individual ministers and MPs.

I don’t know if this hierarch officially exists, that is that it is written down as a definite policy, but the evidence of my survey suggests that it is true. During the period I surveyed on two days there were stories about the Royal Family and both times they were the first story read out. This was even when one of the reports only involved the King in a minor way (it was about a fund he had founded making a donation to build a health clinic).

Radio Swaziland is part of the Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Service which is a government department. By its own account SBIS is ‘responsible for disseminating news and information aimed at educating, informing and entertaining the Swazi nation effectively and impartially for the purposes of development and social welfare through radio broadcasts and publications.’

It goes on to say, ‘The overall role of the SBIS is to assist the Government of Swaziland meet her priorities under the National Development Strategy (NDS), and in particular towards the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic, poverty alleviation and employment generation.’

My survey suggests that Radio Swaziland News fails to entertain (it really is so boring that I only listen to it when I am researching it). It is informative only in the narrow sense that it contains information from government departments but it is difficult to see how any listener could make any use of the information that the bulletins contain.

The news is not impartial since the only point of view it contains comes from the Royal Family or the King’s government.

There has been a lot of discussion in Swaziland this year about transforming SBIS into a public service broadcaster.

Public service broadcasting aims to inform, educate and entertain in a way in which the commercial or state sector left unregulated would not do. Generally, it is understood that public service broadcasters air a wide range of programmes in a variety of tastes and interests. They speak to everyone as a citizen and everyone has an opportunity to access the airways and participate in public life.

The World Radio and Television Council put it well when it said that public service broadcasting stations help people to develop knowledge, broaden horizons and enable people to better understand themselves by better understanding the world and others.

On the evidence of my survey, Radio Swaziland is nowhere close to meeting these criteria.

See also
RADIO SWAZILAND ENGLISH NEWS
BROADCASTING FOR THE PUBLIC

POLICE ‘MURDER’ – NEW EVIDENCE

The campaign by the Times Sunday to prove that police killed an unarmed suspect in cold blood is gaining ground.

The newspaper reported this week (11 November 22007) that a post-mortem examination on Ntokozo Ngozo revealed that the police had lied in their account of the shooting when they said Ngozo was armed and trying to escape from them.

The Times Sunday says, ‘The post-mortem report reveals that police shot the suspect within a range of 35cm twice using a low velocity firearm like a 9mm Parabellum.’

One bullet had been shot into his the left thigh and two others into his body. One went into his chest piercing his left lung heart and killing him. Another shot went through the abdomen and hit his kidney.

An independent pathologist who was commissioned by the human rights group Amnesty International conducted the post-mortem.

The post-mortem report also stated that Ngozo was not wearing a shirt at the time of the death. The Times Sunday reports that Ngozo was wearing a shirt when he was found dead ‘suggesting that it was put on after he was shot.’

The significance of the post-mortem findings is that they contradict the report of the police after the shooting had taken place on 11 August 2007.

According to the Times Sunday, the police first alleged that Ngozo had tried to shoot at them; then the police said he was shot trying to escape from them; and then they said they had to shoot Ngozo because they could not be sure if he was armed and would attack them.

The post-mortem report identifies that the police were at close range (35cm) when they shot him and that two shots were fired at close range after Ngozo had already been hit in the thigh. This evidence contradicts the police statements that Ngozo was trying to escape from them and that Ngozo may have been armed.

In a previous report the Times Sunday quoted witnesses saying that police had shot Ngozo in the thigh and police continued to shoot him while he was crying for help, begging them not to kill him.

Swazi police have declined to comment on the post-mortem report.

WORLD’S MEDIA FAILS AFRICA

The media are failing to show the human side of Africa and instead opt to tell gloomy stories about the continent.

Comfort Mabuza, the director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa – Swaziland Chapter, called on journalists to be more positive in their reporting of Africa.

The Weekend Observer on Saturday (10 November 2007) reported Mabuza saying, ‘The Western media has painted a gloomy picture about the status of the African continent. The most highlighted issue is the plight of the poor, famine and disease.’

Mabuza, who was speaking at a workshop on journalism research organised by the international media organisation Panos, said that in the Western media, one is usually confronted with disturbing pictures of millions dying and skinny and frail bodies.

The Weekend Observer reported Mabuza saying, ‘These pictures are of our brothers and sisters showing them in such a state by the Western media, whilst we dismally fail to tell the stories as we live them.’

He said the Swazi media should take up such stories of severe poverty that has engulfed the country and ravaged more than half the population.

There is nothing particularly new in what Mabuza said, but that doesn’t make his point any less valid.

Media academics and media commentators have been studying the coverage of Africa for many years. In most cases they criticise the under reporting of Africa and the stereotyping of Africans. Africa is seen as a culturally, intellectually and politically inferior continent when compared to America and Europe.

A list of the typical images of Africa as portrayed by the American and European media would look something like this

- Beautiful scenery
- Amazing wildlife
- Africans acting as servants to Western tourists
- Friendly welcoming people (incidentally, a stereotype the Swazi media likes to perpetuate about its own kingdom)
- Political and social instability
- Disaster zones
- Hunger
- Disease
- Corruption
- Incompetent leadership

One reason for the poor quality of the coverage of Africa is that there are relatively few correspondents from the major Western news organisations living in Africa who understand the culture of the people. The correspondents that do exist tend to be based in major urban centres such as Nairobi, Cairo, Harare and Johannesburg, which means they don’t get much opportunity to get out into the rural areas of Africa where most Africans live. As a result they are unable to portray Africa on anything but a superficial level.

The media academic Tina van der Heyden believes there are more subversive reasons for the Western media’s negative portrayal of Africa. These are related to coverage of the West’s role in African news situations and also go a long way to explaining why reports on Africa are often made out of context, obscuring information by omission.

While it’s common to have reports criticising undemocratic African leaders, the Western ‘democratic' country supporting the dictator is seldom mentioned. In the reporting of conflict situations as well, the West’s role in supplying weapons is also not mentioned.
Van der Heyden says that the Western media’s selection of foreign news stories often attempts to disguise or simplify the role Western governments and businesses have played in the exploitation of African countries.

Van der Heyden says that the only time the West’s role in a crisis situation in Africa is emphasised, is when the West has the opportunity to emerge as a ‘Samaritan’ figure, helping the Africa which is unable to help itself. This is often an opportunity for Aid and relief organisations to get some advertising. So you would have a story about the aid worker who risked life and limb to help, but nothing about the local people who deal with the same situation everyday.

There are ways the media’s coverage of Africa may be improved. Van der Heyden reports on Ghana’s Minister of Communications ten-point agenda on how Africa can be given more balanced and accurate coverage.

1. African leaders, governments and citizens, must resolve to work harder to produce more positive news in Africa.

2. Africa must have a positive image of itself.

3. Africans must engage in ‘affirmative reporting’ for Africa.

4. African governments and the private sector must take decisive advantage of news and film exchange programmes.

5. African government must allocate more funds to the communications sector.

6. There should be communication components in funding for projects in sectors like agriculture, education, health etc.

7. More press attaches/cultural or information officers should be posted to diplomatic missions.

8. Professions in Africa allied to journalism, like public relations and advertising have the onerous role of presenting positive images about Africa.

9. African countries should undertake more international public relations campaigns.

10. African countries and their international friends should provide more education and training to journalists.

If you are interested in the topic of media coverage of Africa the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, USA, published a special issue of its quarterly journal Nieman Reports on ‘Africa: Stories to be Told’ in Fall 2004.

The journal includes articles from across the continent. You can get it on the Internet here

See also AFRICA’S NEWS BY AFRICANS

AFRICA’S NEWS BY AFRICANS

More realistic and relevant images of Africa may be seen on television screens across the world with the launch of new TV channels.

The changes come after established global television companies have been criticised for mostly broadcasting news and documentaries that stereotype Africa as a disaster-torn continent full of starving and needy people.

The website journalism.co.za reports that new satellite channels are planned to give an African perspective on African news

South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) began test transmissions of SABC International in June 2007.

‘SABC News International will provide on-the-hour news bulletins and news updates,’ says Alwyn Kloppers, Manager of Resources at SABC News, who is also a member of the task team planning the service.Fashioned on similar lines as the big international services like CNN, BBC World and Al Jazeera, SABC News International will seek to compete commercially.

The channel will replace the existing SABC Africa service carried on DSTV, whose broadcasting contract expires in March 2008. The new channel will be available on Sentech’s relatively unknown VIVID satellite platform. It will be free to air, but users will need to buy a special decoder. It will cover Sub-Saharan Africa from Nigeria to South Africa.

Initially, broadcasting will be mainly in English, with French as the second main language. Other languages like Portuguese could be added in due course.

The SABC initiative comes amid several other continent-wide TV projects, many driven by a sense that Western networks consistently misrepresent Africa. An independent company, Africans Together Vision (ATV), led by Samir Amin, the son of the late Mohamed Amin, a Kenyan cameraman best known for his coverage of the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, is planning a pan-African channel with the name A24 TV.

In 2006, ATV announced that it aims to give a voice to the continent and that it targets free-to-air television and radio stations complemented by mobile and internet services.

The Guardian newspaper, UK, reports that for years a news channel has been beyond the reach of any media organisation in Africa. Now, however, satellite and coverage costs, through new technology and the internet, make A24 possible.

The channel will offer breaking news, analysis and a platform for sharing ideas between Africans from across the continent and beyond. It will use a range of distribution methods including streaming on the internet and mobile phones. Africa is enjoying an explosion of mobile usage and the channel bosses plan to encourage its audience to send user-generated content to its Nairobi headquarters.

Eventually, A24 wants to run 46 news bureaux across the continent. A24 will cover both the uplifting as well as the depressing news from Africa.

The channel will be editorially independent and plans to train its own journalists through the A24 Foundation with the help of Norway's Gimlekollen School of Journalism. The foundation will coordinate this training in cooperation with universities and institutes in South Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya as well as major TV news agencies.

A24 is in discussion with a wide range of international broadcasters and partners about content-sharing, distribution and support, and the channel’s two founders, Amin and managing director Daniel Rivkin, plan to roll the channel out both online and on television during next year.
‘24 will make a difference because it will create a new kind of voice,’ says Amin. ‘It will be truly African, beyond local politics and beyond prejudices.’

Meanwhile, CNBC Africa has recently begun broadcasting as sub-Saharan Africa's first 24/7 international business news channel. Recently, to give more coverage on Africa, Al Jazeera added another portfolio called Al Jazeera Africa to its Al-Jazeera International (AJI), the new 24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel and sister of Al-Jazeera Arabic News Channel.

SECRECY AND THE CONSTITUTION

Last week the High Court denied Swazi people the right to see records about how the Swaziland Constitution was drawn up

Put simply, the High Court said that nobody was allowed to see the records because the Constitutional Review Commission, which controlled the constitutional drafting, said they couldn’t.

There was extensive coverage of this decision in the media last Wednesday (7 November 2007) and the Weekend Observer on Saturday (10 November 2007) published the High Court decision in full.

Judging by the amount of space given to it, the Swazi media thought this was an important story, but not for the first time they missed the point entirely.

Ever since the Constitution was published and enacted in 2006, Royalty, politicians and the media have been telling us that we shouldn’t complain about its contents, because the Constitution represents the will of the people.

What the High Court case reminds us is that we don’t know what the will of the people was. This is because all the documents containing information on the way the constitution was drawn up, and what the people said during the period the constitution was drafted, have been kept secret.

But there was no secrecy about the secrecy. We have always known that the documents have not been available to the public. The High Court case merely confirms this.

I don’t know why the media have allowed the myth of consultation to grow in the public’s mind. Even the media was banned from reporting on discussions while they were taking place.

This shroud of secrecy was well known. In 2003 after the first draft of the constitution was published, King Mswati III expressly requested a group of international lawyers known as the International Bar Association (IBA) to study the draft and to give him comments.

The IBA report, 'Striving for Democratic Governance’, called the draft constitution ‘flawed’ and reported that one critic went so far as to call it ‘a fraud.’

It is worth looking at the IBA report in some detail because it clearly sets out what was going on during the drafting process, which was controlled by the CRC.

The CRC did not allow the judiciary or NGOs to contribute to the debate and ensured that individual Swazi people were interviewed in the presence of their chiefs. As a result the ‘overwhelming’ majority said they wanted the King to keep all his powers and wanted the position of traditional advisers to the King to be strengthened. They also wanted Swazi customs to have supremacy over any international rights obligations.

The IBA report states, ‘The terms of reference of the Commission did not allow expressly for group submissions, and as apparently they were not entertained, NGOs per se were effectively prevented from commenting. The IBA panel considers that, unfortunately, this in itself deprived the CRC of much valuable input.’

The IBA report goes on, ‘The CRC also faced a number of practical problems. There were disputes between local chiefs, collecting views during the rainy season in Swaziland was difficult, and several Commission members resigned.

‘The extent to which individual Swazis were consulted has also been questioned. The CRC did not keep records of the submissions it received and media coverage of submissions was apparently banned.

‘There is therefore no formal record of how Swazi citizens presented their views and of what in fact they said to the CRC.

‘Furthermore, information was elicited in a highly charged atmosphere. Individuals were reportedly asked, in the presence of chiefs, whether they wanted to retain the King and whether they preferred political parties.

‘The CRC report states that “there is a small minority which recommends that the powers of the monarchy must be limited” and continued that “an overwhelming majority of the nation recommends that political parties must be banned”.

‘The report concludes that “an overwhelming majority recommends that the system of Government based on the Tinkhundla must continue” and, as well as the ban on political parties being maintained, that the executive powers of the King should be maintained, the position of traditional advisers to the King strengthened, and Swazi customs have supremacy over any contrary international rights obligations.’

I am bound to say that given the way that the people were ‘consulted’ with chiefs present, and the powers that chiefs hold over their subjects, it is difficult to imagine the people coming to any other conclusion.

TOUGH FOR WOMEN JOURNALISTS

‘Women make lousy journalists because they are incompetent and easily intimidated.’

‘Women have a problem because their productivity and output is naturally low.’


These two comments come from male journalists in Swaziland. The second comment comes from a senior editor of one of the kingdom’s top two newspapers.

The comments are contained in a research report on gender and employment in the Swazi print media industry.

Nok’thula Hlophe studied the experiences women have as journalists in Swaziland by interviewing men and women who work at the Times of Swaziland and the Swazi Observer. Hlophe interviewed people of different ranks from reporters to editors and senior managers.

The two comments highlighted above represent just two of the discriminatory attitudes women journalists face in Swaziland. Of the people interviewed by Hlophe, men mostly held negative views of women in the newsroom.

Here are some of the comments reported.

One male reporter said that the number of women in the newsroom should be kept to a minimum. ‘Journalism is not office work but more like field work, there are assignments that women cannot handle because there are so many factors governing their natural being.’

A male senior editor said that there were few women in the newsroom because when recruiting only a few proved their capabilities.

The male senior editor said, ‘Women fall pregnant and cannot do the job very well. That period requires the reporter to stay away for some time and we lose a lot in the process. Some males get drunk and never turn up for work and others lose stories in the process. In worse situations management is forced to fire reporters.’

A male reporter said that there are no particular problems with women reporters. The problem is that women do not want to compromise their commitments such as marriage.

Another male reporter said, ‘If you could come into the newsroom after 5pm you could notice how impatient women become to leave.’

Seemingly working conditions in the media clash with the roles that women are expected to play. A female reporter said that the newsroom conditions are unfriendly for women because of their commitments. She said, ‘Every day we are expected to be at work by 8am and most of the time we leave around 9pm, you can imagine how bad the situation is for married women’.

Not all men had negative views. A male reporter said it was ‘necessary to have both men and women in the newsroom because we complement each other.’

Another male reporter said, ‘Journalism is not a muscle job so women are capable of doing the job men are. In our newsrooms there is too much male domination and that you can tell by merely reading the newspaper.’

Unsurprisingly, Hlophe, who undertook the research while a student at the University of Swaziland in 2004, wrote that women reporters believed that gender equality should apply in the newsroom.

A female reporter said, ‘Women are as capable as men are so they should be given the equal opportunities as men but what confuses me is that how can we have such a large number of men in the newsroom when there are many capable women out there?’

Another female reporter said that the main problem women faced was stereotyping. They are told that the best can never come from a woman and they believe it. As a result women were stagnant and did not strive for the best. ‘Even the little things they do are not given the attention they deserve because they never focus on their jobs and lack self-confidence.’

Another female reporter said that women tend to shift responsibilities to men, not because they cannot do the job themselves but because they have developed an inferiority complex because they have been discriminated against in the past.

Women report being discriminated against within newsrooms. According to one female reporter, editors do not trust them with the minor assignments they do every day so it would be very hard for them to entrust them with bigger tasks. ‘When you come back from covering an assignment the Editor will breathe down your neck questioning every statement you write such that you can really feel that this person doubts your work,’ she said.

Women journalists reported they were treated differently outside the newsroom, as well as inside. Sources tended to take advantage of female reporters and sometimes intimidated them because they knew women could be soft targets and that costs the women good stories. ‘The employers do not understand this and as a result women are perceived as incompetent,’ according to a female reporter.

Contrary to what the male editor said about women having a ‘naturally low’ productivity and output, a woman reporter told Hlophe that gender does not affect performance and productivity was monitored in the newsroom. ‘I learnt from this that performance does not have anything to do with whether you are male or female but it is about how you deal with the situations you face: do you have confidence in yourself?’ she said.

A male reporter said it was difficult to detect the failure or incompetence in women because the number of women in news reporting roles was so small. ‘The fact that they are never given major responsibilities they are always given easier assignments makes it even harder because it is obvious that they cannot fail to do a simple story from a press release.’

The attitudes to women displayed in Swazi newsrooms reflect those of Swazi society generally. A woman senior manager said, ‘Women are relegated to a lower level by culture such that if women rise to higher positions in society some people view that as an abnormality. The belief is that a women’s place is in the kitchen.’

In the research Hlophe reminds us that media play a large role in promoting (or not) gender equality and in the past the Swazi media has been seen to be perpetuating gender inequality by concentrating on men alone.

Hlophe puts the situation in Swazi newsrooms in a larger context. She quotes Gender Links saying that women’s voices are underrepresented across the media in Swaziland and are virtually missing in certain topics. Older women are invisible in both the print and the electronic media. Women’s voices are not even heard in proportion to their strength in occupational categories, such as agriculture.

This situation is unlikely to change anytime soon if the negative attitudes male dominated newspapers have to their own women staff is anything to go by.

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.

MEDIA FOR DEMOCRACY

‘Democracy won the day’, the Times of Swaziland told us on Monday (5 November 2007) when commenting on the weekend’s local government elections.

It went on to applaud voters for exercising their constitutional right to freedom of choice.

On the face of it things might be looking up in Swaziland, an undemocratic kingdom ruled by an autonomous king.

But, even the Times acknowledged that not many people actually went out to vote.

Both the Times and the Swazi Observer had pages of coverage on the elections in their editions on Monday, but apart from a passing reference to voter apathy in the Times' editorial neither newspaper made any reference to the low turnout.

And the figures weren’t so much low as minute. All over the kingdom candidates were being elected by so few people you could fit them all into a bus. Running my eye down a list of winning candidates I can see a candidate who won with a total of 31 votes, while other winners had 56, 49, and 36 votes.

Looking at these pitiful figures, I think we can safely say that ‘democracy did not win the day’. Nobody won, but the fact that the newspapers missed the big electoral story (the low turnout) speaks volumes about the Swaziland media.

One of the definitions of ‘democracy’ is ‘a system of government by the whole people’. On that definition what happened at the weekend does not constitute a ‘democracy’ and these elections were a sham.

Political parties are banned in Swaziland and there is nowhere safe for people to meet and discuss politics. It is no wonder that when ‘election’ time comes people ignore them, through fear or apathy.

Next year Swaziland has its national elections. Again, political parties will be banned and people will be asked to vote for candidates on the basis of their individual abilities.

It is difficult to organise politics in Swaziland, even at election time. In the last national elections in 2003, political meetings in Swaziland were allowed, but only with the permission of the Election Office. Once permission was obtained campaigns were then held in the tinkhundla centres, (local state-controlled offices) the only venue where such meetings can be held. The Electoral Office and representatives of the local chiefs ran the meetings. This effectively meant that the state was able to control all public political discussion.

A Commonwealth election monitoring team criticized Swaziland’s lack of press freedom during the elections and expressed disappointment at government-owned Radio Swaziland’s reporting on the campaign, saying that restricted coverage reduced voters’ knowledge of the candidates and harmed their ability to hold candidates accountable.

In its editorial on Monday the Times said that by the 2008 elections ‘people should have made some intelligent choices in candidates’. But it is not clear how they can make these choices unless the Swazi media help them.

I don’t blame the journalists. They suffer in the same way as the Swazi people. They don’t really understand what ‘democracy’ is since few of them have lived in a democratic country. A state of emergency was in force in Swaziland for the past 34 years imposed by Royal proclamation in 1973. The new Swazi Constitution does little to encourage democracy since although it allows freedom of association it effectively bans political parties.

There may be some hope. The Times editorial at least identifies the problem, ‘We need men and women of high integrity, who are willing to put people first, refuse to be corrupted by greed or the system and be willing to step down as a matter of principle without fear if they do not subscribe to the self serving interests of certain individuals in this country. That is how important your vote is’.

RADIO SWAZILAND ENGLISH NEWS

Radio Swaziland needs to work harder to meet its own aim to inform the Swazi nation effectively and impartially for the purposes of development and social welfare.

That is one of the conclusions of a survey into the news bulletins on the English service of Radio Swaziland.

Radio Swaziland is part of the Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Service which is a government department. By its own account SBIS is ‘responsible for disseminating news and information aimed at educating, informing and entertaining the Swazi nation effectively and impartially for the purposes of development and social welfare through radio broadcasts and publications.’

It goes on to say, ‘The overall role of the SBIS is to assist the Government of Swaziland meet her priorities under the National Development Strategy (NDS), and in particular towards the fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic, poverty alleviation and employment generation.’

To test whether the radio station was living up to its own mission, I did a survey of the English Service of Radio Swaziland for the week Monday to Friday starting on Monday 29 October 2007. I took the 6 am bulleting (which is repeated word for word at 7 am) and I counted the first six items of the bulletin. Usually there are no more than six items in the entire bulletin which lasts for 10 minutes.

There is only one voice heard on Radio Swaziland news – that of the news reader. No journalists report from the scene of an event and there are no voices of people who have made the news.

The reading ability of the news readers is generally poor. They have difficulty reading the English language aloud and it is very common for them to take two or three attempts at pronouncing some words.

In my survey there were 30 reports in total. Of these only nine were about Swaziland. On three days (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) there was only one news report each day from Swaziland.

The most popular source of news was from South Africa (13 items). Otherwise, during the week there was one report from each of the following countries: Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Sudan, Spain, Russia and Taiwan. Two news reports had no obvious national source.

Of the nine reports from Swaziland, six were speeches or statements from government ministers (including the prime minister), one was about the Swazi Royal Family and two were about private businesses.

Of the six statements from ministers only two concerned the workings of government (a report of impending legislation against sexual abuse of women and children and a report on road reconstruction).

On the evidence of this week’s listening Radio Swaziland cannot be said to be fulfilling its role to ‘responsible for disseminating news and information aimed at educating, informing and entertaining the Swazi nation effectively and impartially for the purposes of development and social welfare through radio broadcasts and publications.’

This is because only nine of the 30 reports were about Swaziland and on three days only one report came from the kingdom. These figures alone show that the radio station doesn’t even place Swaziland at the top of its news agenda (there are more reports from neighbouring South Africa).

When it does report on Swaziland it only reports the ‘official’ voices of government, royalty or business. This may be Radio Swaziland’s response to its remit of ‘disseminating news and information’, but if it is it is a very one-sided interpretation.

Nowhere in any bulletin did we hear the voices of ordinary people. Nor, is there any opposition views aired to the government position. This is dangerously close to government propaganda rather than ‘impartial’ news and information.

SBIS needs to reflect carefully about its mission and look at ways that its service can improve and truly offer news that helps development and social welfare.

(Radio Swaziland also airs news bulletins in the evening. I’ll write about those another time.)

'WAH-WAH' ON THE INTERNET

One of the annoying things about living in Swaziland (and let’s face it there are many) is that it is not easy to get hold of films about the kingdom, even though they are easily available in other parts of the world.

I wrote last Wednedsay about the award winning documentary Without the King which is doing the rounds of the world’s film festivals. It is also available to buy on DVD. But when I emailed the production company that was offering the DVD for sale on the Internet they told me they didn’t ship to Swaziland.

In 2005, a film called Wah-Wah, which is a fictionalised account of the last days of British rule in Swaziland, came out. The film, directed by Richard E Grant, is the story of his childhood in Swaziland in the1960s.

Wah-Wah, which stars many British actors, has been seen all over the world, but since we don’t have a single cinema here in Swaziland it has not been easy to see in the country of the film’s birth.

This is really a long-winded way of reporting that Wah-Wah is now available to view to anyone with a computer and a decent Internet connection.

Some enterprising person has put the film up on the video share site You Tube. (We all need to turn a blind eye to the fact that this is illegal for copyright reasons). If you absolutely must see the film this way you can click here

I’ve already seen the film myself (from a DVD I borrowed from an English friend) and I found it pretty boring. It’s set in the 1960s and is about a group of snobbish British families who mostly work in highly paid jobs who exploit the local Swazis (although the film doesn’t make this clear).

The film was shot in Swaziland and there are some good views of the kingdom. The scenes of the day Swaziland received its independence are worth watching.

Because I’m a fair kind of person, I searched the Internet to find a really positive review of Wah-Wah to share with you.

I failed. But I did find this on a website called Urban Cinefile from Australia

This is a platinum plated cast: Gabriel Byrne is at his best as the decent but troubled, heartbroken alcoholic, while Miranda Richardson cuts loose as his self serving wife.

Emily Watson delivers a remarkable characterisation of Ruby, an American who is like a cat amongst the pigeons of England. Julie Walters and Celia Imre (she often plays Queen Elizabeth II look-alikes) are splendid as very different dames of the colony, and Julian Wadham grates just right as Charles, the stuck up oaf. But none of these are caricatures, which saves the film from a fate worse than death: boredom.

I admire how Grant's writing and direction take Africa for granted (pardon the pun) in the sense that we are spared longing long shots of landscapes and similar signs of awestruck filmmaking. He's telling a story about lives shattered, rebuilt and otherwise traversed, in a passage of time that impacts most heavily on the storyteller: puberty.

Ralph's rescue is partly engineered by an early romance which is neatly and tastefully built in, while the resolution is bitter sweet - enough to make it real, yet uplifting. It's is the real thing, no wah-wah about it.

REPORTERS HAVE SHORT MEMORIES

Reporters in Swaziland have very short memories.

Yesterday (1 November 2007) both the Times of Swaziland and the Swazi Observer reported comments made by the Minister of Health and Social Welfare Njabulo Mabuza who invited the media to help his ministry in its attempt to improve health services in Swaziland.

According to the Observer report, ‘Mabuza said it is only through the co-operation with the media that they can be able to improve the current status quo in the health facilities.’

The Times reported Mabuza wanted the media’s help to publicise initiatives to improve the social welfare of Swazi citizens that the Ministry had underway.

Neither newspaper told us what these ‘initiatives’ actually were.

One ‘initiative’ might be to tackle the problems at the Mbabane Government Hospital. But the media would have difficulty in telling their readers about this because only in June 2007 Minister Mabuza banned health workers from talking to the media (but somehow both the Times and the Observer reports yesterday forgot to remind readers of this).

The ban came after the newspapers ran reports highlighting the impact of a critical drug shortage.

Workers were forbidden to have any type of communication, including interviews and casual or ‘indiscreet’ conversations, whether at clubs, hotels, bars or private parties. Journalists were also barred from Mbabane Government Hospital, the country's key medical facility, whose problems have been highlighted in the press. These problems were considered by the press to be typical of the wider crisis afflicting the healthcare system.

On 23 June 2007, the Times of Swaziland experienced the effects of the Minister’s censorship order when its photographer, Albert Masango, was denied access to the hospital. Hospital security harassed and pulled Masango out of the premises and carried him out to the gate.

Amid Masango’s protestations, the security personnel stressed that, in accordance with a new ‘law’, permission had to be obtained from either the Minister or his Principal Secretary before the media would be allowed to cover anything inside the hospital.

An official at a health facility in the central town of Manzini was quoted by the IRIN news agency that the regulation barring health personnel from speaking with the media was not new. ‘In fact, it began three ministers ago, but it is now being enforced because of all the stories about deaths in government hospitals.’

MEDIA AND GOOD GOVERNANCE

Swaziland’s media do not contribute a great deal to the good governance of Swaziland.

This is the main conclusion of my academic research published last week.

The research sets out four research questions: (i) How pluralistic is media ownership? (ii) How independent are the media from government? How representative are the media of different opinions and how accessible are they to different sections of society, including poor and vulnerable groups and political parties? (iv) What are the capabilities of Swazi journalists and where might there be areas for development?

A review of the Swazi press concludes that on any objective standard the newspapers are found wanting but there are a number of mitigating factors. The country is not a democracy and journalists are harassed if they try to write and publish material that offends the king and his government. There is little 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.

The international community should exert pressure on the kingdom to allow the media proper editorial freedom with legislation to protect and promote the public interest. The public interest should extend beyond the interest of powerful groups to include the poor, powerless and voiceless. It might be that in a kingdom such as Swaziland, the printed press is not the best vehicle to achieve this and instead radio should be extended by dismantling the state controlled SBIS and encouraging the creation of small, community-run stations that are better able to allow for the expression of a range of opinions of public concern.

The research is published in Global Media Journal – African Edition, a new academic journal published by Stellenbosch University. It is available online here.

ACCURACY: DEAD MAN WALKS

There was a bumper crop of apologies for mistakes made published in the Times of Swaziland yesterday (31 October 2007)

In the worst of their mistakes they killed off former Minister of Public Works and Transport, Titus Mlangeni.

As Mark Twain once said, ‘Reports of my death have been exaggerated.’ It was in fact Mlangeni’s wife who had recently passed away.

In another apology the Times gave the wrong name for the recently deceased former Speaker of the House of Assembly. They called him Dlamini when he was in fact a Nsibande.

The ‘newspaper’ scored a hat trick of apologies with this correction, ‘It has been brought to our attention that the article under the heading ‘PM given a week to table report in Parliament’ was incorrect. The MPs voted on the issue and the motion was thrown out.’

I applaud the Times' honesty for apologising for these errors, but the mistakes should not have happened in the first place. All three are the most basic types of errors a reporter can make: getting a name wrong, getting the result of a vote wrong … and killing off a perfectly healthy man.

The result of all this must surely be that readers cannot trust what they see in the Times. How can we know that even the most basic of information published in the newspaper is accurate?

This isn’t the first time the Times has got it wrong and the Times is not the only newspaper to publish inaccurate stories. Who can forget the grovelling apology the Times Sunday had to make after it incorrectly reported 20,000 people died while being treated as patients at Mbabane Government Hospital in 2006?


Then there was the time the Swazi Observer had to apologise to the principal of Waterford Kamhlaba private school for reporting incorrectly that pupils had been hospitalised after taking illegal drugs.

Article one of the Swaziland National Association of Journalists (SNAJ) Code of Ethics states that the duty of every journalist is to write and report, adhere to and faithfully defend the truth. It goes on to state that a journalist should make adequate inquiries, do cross checking of facts in order to provide the public with unbiased, accurate, balanced and comprehensive information.

Getting things right is important because readers must feel that they can trust their newspapers (or other news media). The main way they do this by having confidence that the reports and articles in the newspapers are accurate. Large numbers of people read and trust newspapers. The SNAJ Code of Ethics recognises that journalists have a duty not to mislead the public.

There have been many academic studies into the relationship between media accuracy and credibility. Put simply, the more errors there are in an article, the less credible is the news story. Errors not only diminished respect for the newspaper but also tarnish the media’s working relationships with the sources relied upon for information. If sources of news cannot trust the newspaper to get it right, they are unlikely to willingly work with that newspaper in the future.

Editors of newspapers should make sure that reporters check their facts and do not make mistakes. One newspaper, the Sunday Times in Johannesburg, has a checklist that reporters and editors are asked to complete for each report. The checklist covers a number of areas, including basic information such as the names and ages etc., of people included in the report. It also includes questions about fairness, such as whether all people parties involved in the story have been contacted.

The checklist can be seen here