Rampholo Molefhe
18 July 2008
opinion
The passing of Workers' Day on May 1, and Press freedom Day two days later without much fanfare should have raised questions about the state of journalism, which is inextricably tied to that of labour in general.
On the labour end of journalism there is the art and craft of gathering and recording factual information about events for public consumption as close to the time when they happen as possible.
Secondly, such news reporting is guided by the voluntary adherence to the principles of professional behaviour and ethics developed over centuries by practising craftsmen in journalism.
Thirdly, the professionals meet at the trade union where they discuss professional issues relating to training and skills development, adaptation to new technologies in the communication of news, positioning of the profession in relation to political, social and economic developments, including the establishment of self regulatory mechanisms closely guided by sensitivity to the art and craft, and to ethics and principles of professional behaviour.
There have been varied levels of development in the art and craft of reporting in the various sections of the Botswana press, which is of two types, the state media wholly owned and controlled by the government, and the private press, here posing as community projects and there as purely private business enterprises.
The highest level of development in terms of diversification, development and accumulation of skills, and the lifting of the craft to an art, has occurred in the state press.
Skill here refers to mastery of language. That is, the building of a vocabulary appropriate for the areas of reporting that the Botswana press has covered over the years; politics, business, regional news, sports and entertainment reported as 'hard news' or current events, features on development news, analysis or opinion.
A proper grasp of grammar, or the rules by which one word is placed next to the other, is also an important aspect of the mastery of language.
Further, the journalist must be sensitive to the culture of the audience for which he or she is writing. Writing guides broadcasting of the radio and television varieties. Culture refers to custom, tradition, folklore, the arts in general, and more specifically to the political, social and economic development of the country and its peoples.
Good craftsmanship results from the use of these aspects of language into the techniques developed over time to meet the demands of immediacy, accuracy and ease of reading for the target audience of the specific medium of reporting.
The good story is the one that takes 20 words - preferably fewer - to announce what happened, where, why, who did it, how, and when in what might be called the 'lead' or the opening paragraph.
Every ensuing paragraph reveals one or two verifiable facts that are absolutely necessary to add more information to the initial announcement in the 'lead' paragraph. Everything else becomes irrelevant.
There is no place for 'Gatwe e rile' - Many, many years ago... in journalism. The introduction of a story must say: Spiralling petrol prices are likely to drive taxis off the road, the Ministry of Transport announced this morning. (18 words)
The next statement might say: Permanent secretary, Tiro Tsie, encouraged passengers to fight increasing fuel costs by sharing transport to work and to school.
It is wrong to write: The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Transport, Tiro Tsie, announced this morning that spiralling petrol prices are likely to drive taxis off the road, encouraging passengers to fight increasing fuel costs by sharing transport to work and to school. (40 words).
Firstly, the eyes don't like to see 40 words, containing two or three ideas before they arrive at a full stop. Secondly, in the first example of two sentences there are 37 words. In the bad example there are 40.
The second example wastes three words or the equivalent of one third of a column centimetre in a standard size column on a tabloid size page, the most common in the Botswana newspapers. That is a lot of space if it happens 20 times on each page in a 32 page newspaper. That's 200 words lost, or a story with a picture, or two short stories.
Journalism, unlike essay writing, school compositions, poetry and novels, pursues economy of words with unrelenting vigour, employing adjective and adverbs only if they add the most profound value to the mental picture of the verbs enormous.
For example: Rocky's panic-stricken corner dragged the bloodied boxer off the ring mat onto the stretcher in the second minute of the third round.
Secondly, journalism wants to reveal everything about the event from the onset. Suspension is the stuff of horror movies just as punch lines make for good jokes. Not journalism! In summary, the first aspect of journalism concerns itself with vocabulary, grammar, culture and technique, after which might be added individual style. Personal style follows but does not precede words, rules, culture and professional technique.
Ethics
For lack of space and fear of departing from the main purpose of this contribution, I should submit only that war has played a great role in helping journalists to lay the moral obligations and professional conscience of the journalist.
An order given by a general may cost his foot soldiers their lives, or save them. That is the stark contrast - life and death - in the possible consequences that a general's orders may have.
At another level, the soldier also has the responsibility, on account of his conscience, to judge whether or not to kill an unarmed soldier or civilian of the enemy tribe, nation or ideological camp.
The Jews and Israel hold the Nazi generals responsible for the annihilation of six million of their ilk at World War II. The present generation of Afrikaners believe that they have nothing to do with the crimes of the parents and forefathers who killed Africans in the service of preserving and protecting apartheid?
The journalists, like society in general, had to develop a set of moral rules and professional guidelines according to which, their obligations to the larger society would be regulated.
Forty years ago, increased accessibility to factual information changed the complexion of American politics precisely because the journalists took the position that the 'truth' should be told. Successive governments and army generals had previously held that patriots, including journalists, should have reported the Vietnam War in a way that showed that the United States and South Vietnam were winning when in fact evidence on the ground indicated the opposite.
It is this moral and professional quandary that fuelled the debate about the trustworthiness of information relayed by the 'embedded' journalists as against the reporting of the independent journalists who declined to be instructed by the United States government and its army generals in Iraq.
The 'independent journalists' found and reported the information that showed that core reasons that George Bush and Tony Blair gave to invade Iraq were untruthful. Others have called the false reasons 'fabricated lies'.
Following the much celebrated 'collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc' in the western imperialist countries, much blame was cast upon the journalists of Czechoslovakia, Poland, and other USSR inclined eastern European countries who were accused of conniving with the 'communist states' against the forces of reform and democracy.
Yet again, the question arose: Can the journalists claim innocence on account of obedience to officialdom, or should they stand by the most compelling of the principles of professional ethics and behaviour: the first obligation of the journalist is to the truth.
These moral and professional questions were very present when the Africans wanted liberation from settler colonialism in South Africa and Rhodesia not so long ago. The questions still arise, perhaps not so sharply, as the journalists address the roles of the state and private press. There is no genuine public press. Neither is there a community based press.
Class
Much of the preceding discussion pivots around professional rules of behaviour, which derive their efficacy from moral principle.
That is the naive view. The history of journalism teaches that it was the elite, the aristocrats, and the privileged classes of society who were the pioneers of the establishment of what has been generously named 'the fourth estate'.
Over the years, journalism developed from a vocation that wanted to protect the interests of the poor and voiceless into a business to widen the capacity of owning classes to diversify the niches where there were possibilities for expanding profits.
As this transformation occurred, custody of the pioneering moral principles of journalism gravitated towards the capitalists who now own and control the 90 to 100 media multinationals.
The small operations of the underdeveloped world mimic the operations of the international corporate groupings, aspiring to achieve their economic successes, thereby, imposing the ideology of capitalism - unbridled pursuit of profit - on the labourers who are the professional journalists who write the news.
This means that the first obligation of the journalist to report the truth is relegated to something of a fleeting moral sentiment, when compared to the urgency of the capitalists to expand profits.
Rape becomes a vice of the poor and a virtue of the rich. Theft is a crime of the disadvantaged and marginalised and a misdemeanour for the rich, usually reported as misadministration or misuse of funds for which the culprit will escape with only a charge of incompetence or carelessness!
Simply put, for the publishers and capitalists, the only truth that matters is the pursuit of profit, even if that means going against the facts on the ground, which are the very basis of the journalist's story.
Ethics and principles of professional behaviour are then reduced to trivialities to be pursued only by dreamers, idealists and failed priests.
Ethics, then, mean one thing to labour as represented in the journalist, and another to the publishers for whom the Pula comes before the word.
* Refer to the reports on the story of the grandchild of a rich local car dealer who requested that the papers should not write the story until the culprit was captured. The local press deferred, never debating whether the businessperson was a professional detective or not. And never considering whether it would have been in the public interest, or the best interest of the safety of the captured child if the story was told. The editors obliged and business went on as normal.
* There was the front page story and picture that plainly sought to ridicule the spokesperson of the First People of the Kgalagadi, Roy Sesana, on account of his championing of the struggle of the Basarwa to resist forced relocation out of the Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve, and on account of his association with Steve Cory of Survival International. The editors laughed and published, much to the satisfaction of the state, which needed to be persuaded to reverse its decision to advertise in the private press on account of a story that made President Festus Mogae look smaller than his deputy, Ian Khama.
There are countless other examples in which the appetite for advertisements overwhelmed the search for the truth.
More embarrassing is the willingness of the journalists to take bribes on the promise of sending to print promotional stories.
The journalist, the principles say, must be protected against revealing sources. It now emerges that it is not uncommon practice for reporters to invent their own sources, sometimes even giving them names. The older practice was to refer only to 'reliable sources', or 'sources who preferred anonymity for fear of recrimination'.
The principle says that the journalist must not use information the source of which he does not know.
There are nine principles in all. Some Batswana have invented a few of their own, which have more to do with principles of reporting rather than principles of journalism. One says: Reporters must distinguish fact from opinion. Surely that is well covered under the principle of reporting that requires the writer to ensure that his information is factual, objective and accurate!
Union
The conventional and outdated definition of the union largely espoused by managers, publishers, proprietors and government is the one that limits the role of that type of organisation to wage negotiations with employers.
The ruling party expects the unions to 'keep out of politics'. The unions are expected to surrender concerns about their social lives and the well being of their families to the good conscience of the employers who will occasionally cater for entertainment nights and 'social evenings' for hard working employees.
The trade union is the advanced fighting detachment of labour, whereas the working class or proletarian, socialist and communist party represent the broader political interests of the working class in general.
In addition to advancing the economic interests of media employees, the union is obliged to seek a political dispensation that accommodates the right of labour to a share of ownership of the key economic assets of the country and a role in management of the state and all its resources.
The union has a duty to fight for protection of the social rights of families of journalists including the right to bury their dead, to attend cultural ceremonies, to worship and participate in meetings of Kgotla and other community institutions of their choice, and to entertainment.
These rights are assumed for company executives who enjoy extended holidays, educational subsidies for their children, rent subsidies, entertainment allowances, company transport and medical aid, all guaranteed by contract.
In this era of the 'knowledge based' society supported by advances in information technology and communication techniques, the journalists and their unions should be at the head of national efforts to link the communities of Botswana to each other and the country to the international community of nations by building and exploitation of the most efficient systems of communication.
The union is the place of communion for the journalist's fraternity who must have a press club to discuss current events, meet community leaders, debate methods of self-regulation, and share professional experiences with the view of ultimately advising the political leadership of the trade union.
The union establishes training programmes for members and scouts for educational opportunities for members.
The employers have their Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Management (BOCCIM) where the capitalists conspire with government about means of exploitation of labour and the working class in general.
The union of journalists and other press workers must connect itself to other sections of labour which will include employees in telecommunications, the post offices, IT, the entertainment industry, distribution and transport services, printers with whom they might even converge at a federation of communications practitioners.
Challenges
Owners and publishers: the most immediate challenge to advancement of the art and craft of journalism, to respect for ethics and professional behaviour and the journalists trade union is the cartel of publishers, media executives and owners. They cut across the state and private press, which face no challenge from an alternative management at the public press.
The owners and publishers, particularly in the 'private' press, but also at the state media, are driven by the profit motive, euphemistically referred to as 'cost recovery' at the commercial government operations.
The owners and publishers, have more in common among themselves than either of them with the journalists. They also have the financial and administrative resources to give effect to their common interests. The journalists have neither the financial resources nor the ideological conviction to match the resources of the captains of the industry. That will remain so until the journalists organise and establish their trade union on the ground.
Art and Craft: The absence of the trade union and the demise of the press club have ensured that there should be no continuing tradition of transferring skills from one generation to the next.
The new journalists are caged in their individual newspaper and broadcasting houses, all of them struggling to earn the favour of the management or the employer. Manipulation of the system becomes the most useful skill rather than presentation of a good news product. Sex for promotion, corridor gossip, and backbiting among the reporters become the order of the day, destroying any prospect of worker unity and unionisation.
The journalists have no words. The grammar is worse. There is little sensitivity to indigenous culture. News is viewed as it would be at CNN, DSTV channels, or in the Hollywood movies, to say nothing of the Internet.
Ethics: There can be no respect for ethics and professional behaviour where there is no grounding in the art and craft of journalism. Put another way, journalism skills are a prerequisite for cultivation of a culture of adherence to ethics and principles of professional behaviour in the press.
The dilemma of faltering respect for ethics is worsened by the shifting emphasis from truthful reporting to of the obsession of the executives of the media industry with the pursuit of profit, even at the expense of the promotion of news for development. In other words, the pioneering ideals of journalism have been steadily eroded in the short life of the private press in Botswana starting in 1983.
Further, the adjudicators in press disputes arising out of questions of ethics and fairness in editorial matters have been surrendered to non-journalists who cannot be expected to tell the difference between a beer and a soft drink. The press councils and other adjudicative bodies are initiatives of the government and press managers and not the journalists.
Professionals imported from other careers and vocations have not been adequately schooled and mentored in any of the aspects of journalism referred to above. Many were catapulted from teaching, university, the police force and other pursuits of livelihood without any programme of induction to the practice of journalism. Many serve as administrators and managers in a profession they have never practiced from the level of apprentice to manager.
Even as these recruits to journalism could bring expertise from their initial vocations and professions, the failure to properly introduce them to journalism results in messy editorial practice, disrespect for journalistic ethics, contempt for the union and dastardly failure in administration.
Invariably, those who stick around the longest imagine themselves as the custodians of ultimate morality and routine, none of which are related to the fulfilment of the specific requirements of the proper running of a media enterprise. The greatest claim to fame of the professional recruits is abstinence from alcohol, promiscuity, gossip and worship of spirits.
Conclusion
Without a deliberate effort to return to the founding ideals of journalism - to give a voice and protection to the powerless majority - the media of Botswana will continue to cascade into the abyss of financial prosperity accompanied by professional bankruptcy.
There has to be a refocusing on craftsmanship, which is the primary requisite for even beginning the debate about the purpose of journalism in the first place.
When the basic requirement of good craftsmanship has been achieved, it will be time for the application of the ethical code and principles of professional behaviour to editorial work.
None of this will be possible without the proper establishment of a strong trade union of the journalists and other media workers who must seek brotherhood with the broader labour movement, locally and internationally.
The journalists must play a leading role in assisting the achievement of a knowledge based society in Botswana and abroad.
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