The Star’s first draft: a news organization revises the next narrative of race in post‐apartheid South Africa

Abstract

The evolution of South Africa’s news media has been fraught with uncertainties as the nation’s news organizations negotiate organizational and occupational ideologies and reporting strategies in the post‐apartheid era. The mainstream English press in particular has been struggling for a sense of identity despite a history of anti‐apartheid ‘watchdog’ activity. This essay examines a major Johannesburg English newspaper and its principal rival from 1999 to 2005, the critical years just before and just after a showdown with the larger society over charges of racism in the news. It shows how organizational cultures of newspapers and their ideological schemata may be affected both by transformations in the political systems and by the unfolding of major news events, such as the government’s reaction to the AIDS pandemic.

Keywords:

• South Africa
• journalists
• newspapers
• AIDS
• racism

Notes

1. Afrikaner is the term applies to whites largely of Dutch descent and whose preferred language is Afrikaans, which is derived from Dutch.

2. Banning a newspaper meant a loss of legal authority to operate in the country. Banning was often applied to individual reporters and editors and could last from two to five years. In addition to The Star, government informers could be found in every English‐language newsroom. Police also routinely tapped journalists’ phones (Finnegan 1988, 31–2).

3. The scandal was named after the then Minister of the Interior Connie Mulder, who was at the heart of the newspaper’s start‐up. In the 1990s, after the fall of apartheid, Jones (1999) contends, The Citizen, which had a large black readership, became more moderate.

4. Hachten and Giffard (1984, 37) note that in 1897 The Star was banned for three months for running a cartoon berating President Kruger who was then President.

5. Sparks (2003, 65) explains that the early English press concentrated almost exclusively on the English‐Afrikaner political struggle and that editors of major papers were ‘conservative white men with a suburban mindset’. That mindset began to change in the 1950s as a reaction to pan‐Africa decolonization and black resistance movements (2003, 65). Former Star editor Peter Sullivan said that during apartheid the newspaper’s oppositional posture did not prevent separate toilets ‘because the Star was strong on rule of law’. Black journalists came aboard The Star in 1984.

6. The term mainstream is used in the sense of a newspaper with a more socio‐economically heterogeneous audience, as opposed to an alternative paper such as the Mail & Guardian, whose audience tends to be a more educated elite.

7. These categories refer primarily to audience and newsroom composition.

8. The Star’s audience is diverse, unlike the Sowetan, the largest circulation newspaper with an exclusively black audience, or most Afrikaans newspapers with a predominately, though not exclusively white, audience. The Star is also one of the best known in international journalistic circles. During apartheid, white newspapers and black newspapers competed with black papers for black readers by publishing extra editions for black readers (Finnegan 1988, 33). The Afrikaans press was tied to Afrikaner political philosophy, in which, ‘Restrictions on the freedom of the individual were acceptable if necessary for the greater cause of freedom for the community and the interests of national security’ (Hachten and Giffard 1984, 181). Hachten and Giffard also note that the Afrikaans press is, and was, not monolithic. Die Beeld in the 1960s wrote about divisions in the Afrikaner social and political systems (Hachten and Giffard 1984, 184). Towards the end of the Nationalist era, the authors add that ‘Afrikaans newspapers became an important internal oppositional force advocating reform within the Nationalist party’ (ibid., 178).

9. De Villiers also said that the role of blacks at the paper had changed dramatically since the end of apartheid because they were the only ones who could cover the townships, which was where the activism was. The Sowetan once had a white editor. Before 1995, there were no blacks in management at The Star.

10. US newspeople will frequently cite the First Amendment as evidence of this.

11. Tomaselli, Teer‐Tomaselli, and Muller (1989, 33) go so far as to say that during apartheid state opposition to the English press was a ‘… secondary consequence of the suppression of black opposition to apartheid’. This suggests that the discourse between English press and government at the time seemed to have had a stabilizing effect on society by providing a kind of safety valve.

12. Except from an interview with the author in August 1999 in The Star newsroom in Johannesburg.

13. The presence of foreign media in South Africa is substantial for a nation of about 42 million. US based news organizations that have maintained bureaus in Johannesburg in the post‐apartheid era have included: CNN, Newsweek, Time Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post. Many other foreign newspapers maintain correspondents.

14. What drives Ms Dolny? (1999) Sunday Times, 12 September. From the online edition, available at 〈http://www.suntimes.co.za/1999/09/12/insight/in01.htm〉

15. According to the South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF), in Johannesburg, more than 50% of reporters were found to be African (De Beer and Steyn 2002, Section 3.2).

16. The Associated Press’s then South Africa Bureau Chief Terry Leonard, in a 1999 interview noted that the South African press in general was not particularly reliable and that the nation had no print media that could be considered serious ‘papers‐of‐record’.

17. The South African Human Rights Commission moved to probe racism in the media at its 26^th Plenary Session held in Johannesburg on 11 November 1998. In a formal statement from that session the Commission noted: ‘A study of racism in the media, hopefully, will heighten the sensitivity of all South Africans to the issue of racism and will ensure a greater respect for freedom of expression. We believe that these matters are interrelated’ (Section 2.4).

18. From a The New York Times editorial, South Africa’s Embattled Press, appearing on the Editorial Page 26 February 2000.

19. In a 16 November 1999 interim report, Commission Chairperson Barney Pityana said, ‘South Africa has no reason to place freedom of expression on a pedestal above other rights’ (page 4). Years later, Pityana, then Vice‐Chancellor of the University of South Africa (UNISA) accused the Mail & Guardian of racism and threatened to sue for defamation after the newspaper alleged he was misusing university funds (International Press Institute’s World Press Freedom Review 2002).

20. The headline “Aids ‘far deadlier than apartheid’ “ appears on a 22 March 2001 The Mail & Guardian story taken from the Agence France‐Presse (AFP), a wire service. http://query.mweb.co.za/cgi‐bin/cqcgi/@mg.env?CQ_SESSION_KEY=CMQBYKXLUVCI&CQDC=2&CQ_CUR_DOCUMENT=14&CQ_QUERY_HANDLE=131233&CQCOPYQUERY=aids&CQ_SAVE[Show_Doc1]=TRUE&CQ_RESULTS_DOC_TEXT=YES#BESTHIT. Accessed 28 March 2001.

21. From a correspondence from Jovial Rantao, Star editor and columnist, in response to the author on 25 April 2000.

22. Criticism of Mbeki came from several fronts. Typical of US reaction was a 21 June 2001 New York Times Editorial Page editorial – ‘South Africa’s Failure on AIDS’ – that called the Mbeki government’s history of scepticism about AIDS treatment ‘ignoble’. On 4 November 2001, The Times on the same page noted: ‘It is hard to understand how Mr Mbeki, a reformer in many other ways, can be so irresponsible about AIDS’.

23. The headline “Aids ‘far deadlier than apartheid’ “appears on a 22 March 2001 The Mail & Guardian story taken from the Agence France‐Presse (AFP), a wire service. http://query.mweb.co.za/cgi‐bin/cqcgi/@mg.env?CQ_SESSION_KEY=CMQBYKXLUVCI&CQDC=2&CQ_CUR_DOCUMENT=14&CQ_QUERY_HANDLE=131233&CQCOPYQUERY=aids&CQ_SAVE[Show_Doc1]=TRUE&CQ_RESULTS_DOC_TEXT=YES#BESTHIT. Accessed 28 March 2001.

24. The South African government estimates that almost 10% of the population, or about 4.2 million South Africans were infected with HIV in 2000, high by world standards, although not but sub‐Saharan Africa standards (Reuters 2000). The New York Times Magazine reported in 2004 that about a third of all sexually active adults in Botswana and South Africa carry HIV, nearly 10 times higher than almost anywhere in the world outside Africa (Epstein 2004).

25. Following western press traditions, the Mail & Guardian and The Star editorials are unsigned, implying that they represent the opinion of the editorial staff and by extension, newspaper management. Sometimes the byline ‘by the Editor’ is used.

26. Excerpt from “A disastrous reign; This week’s editorial from the Mail & Guardian” appearing on Editorial Page, 26 April 2001.

27. du Preez, Max. 2001. Changing face of the presidency. The Star column. http://www.iol.co.za/html/frame_thestar.php, filed 21 June 2001. Accessed 22 June 2001.

28. Rantao, Jovial. 2001. The three wars SA must win. The Star, online edition. Filed 24 November 2001 at 09:26PM. http://www.iol.co.za/html/frame_thestar.php, accessed 24 November 2001.

29. By The Editor, 2001. Aids: face truth. The Star, Editorial Page, also on online edition, http://www.iol.co.za/html/frame_thestar.php, filed 25 October 2001 at 10:44PM, accessed 26 October 2001.

30. By the Editor. 1999. The Star, Lead editorial. Editorial Page. 19 May 1999.

31. By The Editor. 2001. The kiss of death. The Star, Editorial Page, also on online edition, http://www.iol.co.za/html/frame_thestar.php, filed 18 June 2001 at 09:54PM, accessed 19 June 2001.

32. The editorial is bylined ‘by the Editor’. It is available at 〈http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=355069&fSectionId=234&fSetId=257〉.

33. The report was titled: ‘SA Media’s ‘blind spot’ on Aids: analysis shows that the pandemic has dropped from the media’s agenda’. Media Tenor is an international media content analysis institute.

34. For example, on 8 March 2004, Khathu Mamaila wrote the following (titled ‘Show the Voters a Level of Respect’) prior to national elections: