London - Imagine South Africa scoring above the UK, Australia, Belgium, Spain, Italy and the US in the 2023 World Press Freedom Index (WPFI), released in early May and compiled annually by Reporters without Borders (RSF).
The index assesses the state of journalism in 180 countries and territories with respect to political conditions, legal frameworks, safety and economic and socio-cultural metrics.
Never mind the dire state of the economy, the entrenched stage 6 to 8 power cuts, depending on whether you believe Eskom or the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and a cost-of-living crisis that has ravaged society, especially the marginalised majority, disproportionately.
South Africans can rejoice in the fact that their country’s ranking in the WPFI significantly improved, moving up 10 places from 35th in the world in 2022 to 25th this year.
Only Namibia is ranked higher, in 22nd place, in sub-Saharan Africa, which according to the index remains “a high-risk continent for journalists where disinformation keeps on spreading.
In countries plagued by conflicts and security threats, governments treat the media as propaganda tools.”
South Africa’s improved ranking may be a small consolation as a feel good factor for struggling compatriots.
But we are a hardy lot and perhaps a wee bit more media savvy and literate than our peer countries.
“The public appreciates the media’s reporting,” observes the WPFI survey, “partly in recognition of the role journalists played in drawing attention to apartheid-era abuses, but also because of the high level of interest in politics, crime, justice and societal issues.
Some subjects are hard to cover, and journalists are often obstructed when covering protests.”
Nevertheless, the South African media landscape “is sturdy, diverse and dynamic”. South Africa guarantees press freedom and has a well-established culture of investigative journalism.
Media outlets do not hesitate to reveal scandals involving powerful figures. That is largely due to the legacy of the Struggle against apartheid and to Madiba’s term as the first democratically elected leader of a free South Africa, in which a progressive 1996 Constitution staunchly guarantees and protects press freedom.
How poignant that RSF’s 2023 Index was published a few days before the 29th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as the first president of a democratic South Africa on May10, 1994, and a week or so before the first free elections were held on Freedom Day on April 27 in the same year.
Whatever the ANC’s shortcomings – and they have been piling up largely due to its own making – President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government should be commended for largely upholding this fundamental “pillar of our democratic order” that is press freedom.
“As a relatively new democracy compared to those with more entrenched traditions of constitutionalism,” commented Ramaphosa on the WPFI findings, “we should be proud of our promotion of a free and independent media.
Our journalists continue to be the standard bearers for accountability and the empowerment of citizens. Media investigations have shone a spotlight on corruption, the abuse of vulnerable people, the targeting of whistle-blowers, and all manner of wrongdoing within the state, private sector, academia and other sectors.”
The South African media ecosystem in a global context is much more favourable. Lest complacency sets in, there are signs of creeping challenges, which need constant vigilance and calling out.
Globally, the environment for journalism is “bad” in seven out of 10 countries, and satisfactory in only three out of 10.
“The World Press Freedom Index,” maintains Christophe Deloire, the secretary-general of RSF, an international non-profit organisation championing freedom of information and the media, “shows enormous volatility in situations, with major rises and falls and unprecedented changes, such as Brazil’s 18-place rise and Senegal’s 31-place fall. This instability is the result of increased aggressiveness on the part of the authorities in many countries, and growing animosity towards journalists on social media and in the physical world.”
Equally disturbing is the fact that “the volatility is also the consequence of growth in the fake content industry, which produces and distributes disinformation and provides the tools for manufacturing it”.
China, ranked 179th, has the dubious distinction of being “the world’s biggest jailer of journalists and one of the biggest exporters of propaganda content”.
The rapid contagion of fake news and digital content is seriously undermining press freedom and democracy.
In 118 countries surveyed by RSF, political actors were “often or systematically involved in massive disinformation or propaganda campaigns.
“The difference is being blurred between true and false, real and artificial, facts and artifices, jeopardising the right to information. The unprecedented ability to tamper with content is being used to undermine those who embody quality journalism and weaken journalism itself.”
The largest looming threat is artificial intelligence (AI), which is wreaking further havoc on the media world.
AI, says RSF, “is digesting content and regurgitating it in the form of syntheses that flout the principles of rigour and reliability. The fifth version of Midjourney, an AI programme that generates very high-definition images in response to natural language requests, has been feeding social media with increasingly plausible and undetectable fake photos.”
Ramaphosa acknowledges that the South African media faces several challenges.
These include the struggle for survival, especially of small independent outlets, because of high operating costs in the face of technological change; the changing nature of media consumption in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic; and vilification of journalists, especially on social media and by political figures, some espousing hate speech and violence.
In 2021, the Constitutional Court ordered changes to the law on intercepting communications in order to safeguard the confidentiality of journalists’ phone conversations and the need to better protect their sources.
The Ramaphosa presidency does not hesitate to use apartheid-era and antiterrorism laws to limit reporting on institutions deemed to be in the “national interest”, and is often accused of using the government’s considerable discretionary powers to favour certain media outlets through advertising expenditure.
The role of the media is to hold those in authority in government, business and civil society to account in the public interest. With perhaps the second-most important general election after the inaugural one, due next year, the media wars in the country’s body politic is set to intensify even more over the next year given the stakes are very high.
Politicians cannot prescribe or proscribe the behaviour of the media, who like any other sector are after all subject to the law of the land. Good socio-political governance can only thrive if the media does its job unencumbered and, yes, responsibly.
Ramaphosa is right that “in the end, the state of our media is not defined by its ranking on an index, but by how it contributes to building a vibrant democracy with an informed, empowered and active citizenry”.
That’s only half the story. It is defined by the state of freedom of the media; its constitutional, legal and security safeguards; a diverse ownership; affordable accessibility; and a culture of governance and organisational transparency and disclosure that puts the collective interests and integrity of our nascent and hard-earned democracy above the narrow self-enrichment of politicians and their apparatchiks.
Parker is an economist and writer based in London
Cape Times