South African students protest banning of political organizations, February 1988. (Afrapix/Impact Visuals)
Beginning in late 1985, the South African government enacted a series of press restrictions. The goal was clear: drive “the pictures” off foreign TV screens, especially the vivid images of white cops beating, tear gassing and shooting at black kids.
That the press restrictions worked is not debatable. Coverage of South Africa dramatically decreased. During August 1985, a month of intense unrest, US television news aired several hundred South Africa stories cited by the TV News Index and Abstracts — compared to only 102 stories during August 1987, a month of unrest (which included a strike in the gold mines). A survey of newspaper stories showed a similar drop-off after the press clampdown.
Media coverage of events in South Africa had fueled protests overseas, including calls for divestment and sanctions, turning the battle inside South Africa into a global cause. But when coverage fell off — especially the TV footage of confrontations between the army and the community in the townships — public pressure on Congress also subsided. Dwindling news attention resulted in the perception that matters were no longer in a crisis stage, demanding action.
Opponents of apartheid, both in South Africa and the US, argue that the US media have been essentially complicit in Pretoria’s press restrictions. “Has the censorship been effective? Sure it has,” said Mark Kusnetz, foreign news producer for NBC Nightly News, who remains proud of his program’s South Africa coverage.
Pretoria’s press regulations appear calculated to keep the media off balance. They are deliberately vague so as to induce caution and self-censorship. As former New York Times foreign editor Joseph Lelyveld acknowledged last year: “The press clampdown has had some success. But there is no formal censorship system. I don’t think we have ever submitted a line of copy. It’s a system of self-censorship.”
Former CBS News producer Richard Cohen commented:
They’ve kept us from covering the story because of the fear that by breaking the rules, we’ll get tossed out. We play an insidious game of video appeasement with the government. Walk up to the line. Don’t cross it. Show as much as you think you can get away with, never more…. The public thinks we are covering the story, but we’re not. That’s the dirty little secret that journalists don’t want to discuss.
Former ABC correspondent Ken Walker criticized US media performance at a 1987 Nieman Foundation conference on South Africa and news censorship. Walker said that ABC Nightline’s celebrated 1985 programs from South Africa followed years of lobbying by black employees and the growth of the Free South Africa Movement. He said Pretoria only granted Nightline visas after CBS 60 Minutes aired a Morley Safer report considered flattering by the South African government. It expected a repeat performance.
Walker believes the news media don’t care about the South Africa story. He cited the absence of black network correspondents in the field — none have ever been assigned to South Africa — as another sign of an unwillingness to challenge the system.
Capetown celebrates Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday. (Afrapix/Impact Visuals)
A South African journalist (who asked to remain anonymous) said a reporter’s political openness is as important as racial sensitivity. “South Africa is viewed as one of us, as a Western democracy, and the correspondents operate as if it was one,” he stated. “Western reporters cover South Africa from the point of view of the people who run it, not from the point of view of those who suffer it.”
It’s often said that if American journalists challenged the government’s press regulations, they’d be tossed out. Ken Walker linked the lack of video footage available to TV news to the threat of expulsion. Yet he asserted that the same fear is not present in Eastern European countries, where government restrictions are routinely challenged, and where expulsion is often a badge of honor.
Richard Cohen seconded this point: “We smuggled pictures out of the wilderness of Afghanistan. We could do the same in South Africa.”
Anti-apartheid activists have questioned news media claims that reduced coverage stems from a lack of video footage. There are many well-known alternative sources (such as Afravision) providing video of demonstrations, meetings and other activities shot by independent crews inside South Africa. This footage is rarely sought by US networks.
Danny Schechter is executive producer of Globalvision’s South Africa Now.
