The subpoena landed on the editor's desk on a Friday afternoon last month. It ordered him to appear before the country's Human Rights Commission, which was investigating racism in the media. It said he must account for his newspaper's reporting or face up to six months in jail. All told, the commission issued 36 such subpoenas to editors -- white and black -- of newspapers, radio and television stations. And in a country where freedom of the press was only recently enshrined in the Constitution, where newspapers were frequently closed and journalists arrested under the apartheid government, the subpoenas sent shivers through South Africa's newsrooms. ''I thought, 'My God,' '' said the editor, Phillip van Niekerk, who is white and who runs the Mail & Guardian, a weekly here. ''I really didn't expect them to go that far. The jackboot approach is something we thought we'd got away from.''
In the outcry that ensued, the subpoenas were withdrawn and the editors agreed to appear voluntarily before the commission. Mr. van Niekerk and other white editors say they are willing to discuss the issue; they just don't want to be forced to discuss it. Nonetheless, the hearings on racism in the media, which started this week, have set off a debate over whether the commission and the government of President Thabo Mbeki are trying to stifle criticism and dissent in the press.
It is no secret that Mr. Mbeki and his ruling party, the African National Congress, remain deeply suspicious of the white-dominated news media. Most of the nation's politically influential newspapers, including Mr. van Niekerk's Mail & Guardian, are run by white editors. Party and government officials, who helped write the country's new Constitution, say white journalists seem intent on discrediting the black government and typically disregard issues important to the black majority.
Mr. Mbeki, the African National Congress and commission members deny that they want to muzzle the media, but they rarely sugarcoat their criticism. The A.N.C. applauded the commission for issuing the subpoenas. Last month, in its annual report, the ruling party described the media as a ''hostile press'' that is ''still primarily owned and controlled by antagonistic forces with minority interests.'' Those opinions are increasingly shared by black editors. At today's hearing, five black editors broke ranks with their white colleagues to support the commission's investigation, which has been largely derided by whites. The black editors testified that the media still portrays blacks as corrupt and incompetent, focuses almost exclusively on the white minority and drowns out the stories and concerns of ordinary black people. ''It is our contention that in a country like South Africa, it simply cannot be right that, because of its dominance in the media, a minority should continue to set the public agenda,'' said Mike Siluma, editor of Sowetan, the nation's largest daily, one of several popular newspapers directed at black readers.
The black editors said the issue was so important that they would have willingly testified under subpoena, which stunned their white counterparts, who had unanimously attacked the subpoenas as an infringement of press freedom. ''We talk about a rainbow nation, but we're still living in different places,'' said Mr. van Niekerk. Many of the editors, black and white, battled apartheid in South Africa and suffered for it. In 1988, Mr. van Niekerk, who worked at what was then The Weekly Mail, saw his newspaper shuttered temporarily because the government decided it had portrayed A.N.C. guerrillas favorably.
Peter Sullivan, the white editor of The Star, who then worked for the liberal Rand Daily Mail, was forced to justify his reporting before a government commission in the 1970's. Aggrey Klaaste, the black editor-in-chief of the Sowetan, was jailed for six months in 1977 after the government closed what was then Sunday World. All three men run influential newspapers. All agree that the commission's interim report on racism in the media, which was the foundation of the investigation, was seriously flawed. The report, for instance, criticized a photograph of two black birds near an overflowing garbage can, saying the birds depicted Johannesburg's black downtown and the garbage can its decay.
All agree that the subtle racism and stereotyping described in the report continues to surface in newspapers and television and radio broadcasts. ''We mirror a very racist society,'' Mr. Sullivan said. ''If there was no racism in the media, it would be absolutely astounding.'' But that is where the similarities end. The white editors say they are already working hard to hire blacks and to carefully scrutinize coverage, and that the commission's investigation was, for the most part, unnecessary. The black editors disagree.
After the hearing this week, the commission will present its recommendations to Parliament. ''People must not pretend that things are normal when they are not,'' Mr. Klaaste said. ''The country is run by white people, economy-wise. These newspapers are run by white people. We know that. There's no point in trying to be coy about this kind of thing. They say there is racism in the media, but they say that and do nothing about it.''
The commission began looking at the issue two years ago when the Black Lawyers Association and the Association of Black Accountants called for bias inquiries into two papers, including the Mail & Guardian. The groups pointed out that the Mail & Guardian had written 14 times about allegedly corrupt blacks but only 4 times about whites. Journalists counter that that should not be surprising since the most government officials these days are black. They also note that the major newspapers have given Mr. Mbeki some favorable coverage. Mr. Mbeki and Trevor Manuel, the finance minister, received rave reviews last month for major speeches. According to the commission's statistics, progress has been made in the hiring and promotion of blacks, but whites still overwhelmingly dominate the top tiers of management. Last year, the commission said, about 76 percent of the country's top media managers were white compared with 88 percent in 1994.
But whites are not the only ones to voice concerns about Mr. Mbeki's commitment to freewheeling discussion and critique. Earlier this year, two black professors complained about what they described as the dampening of dissent within the ruling party in a column in the recently revived Sunday World newspaper. And last year, Trevor Ngwane, an African National Congress councilman in Johannesburg, was suspended from his party positions for publicly criticizing the A.N.C.-led council's planned privatization of government services. Parks Mankahlana, a spokesman for President Mbeki, said the Human Rights Commission, an independent body that reports to Parliament, is no mouthpiece for Mr. Mbeki. Last year, he noted, the commission sharply criticized the government for seeming to scale back rights of accused criminals and began an investigation into the government's interim policy against distribution of the anti-AIDS drug A.Z.T.
Mr. Mankahlana emphasized that it was the black government, not the white government, that gave this country its first constitutionally protected rights to free speech. ''This thing of being intolerant of dissent, it's just not true, '' he said.
Source: New York Times
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