Exploring the social responsibility of tabloid journalism in South Africa: Views from the Daily Sun and Sunday Sun (original) (raw)

Review of Black, White and Grey: Ethics in South African Journalism

Black, white and grey is a timely contribution to the discussion of South African news media by Wits journalism lecturer and Mail & Guardian ombud Franz Krüger. It comes at a time when the practice of journalism in this country is being scrutinised after a series of incidents involving plagiarism, “disloyalty”, questionable relationships with sources, interference in political and legal processes and, of course, the ongoing battles with racism, sexism, representation and sensationalism.

The state of South African media: a space to contest democracy

Publizistik

The South African media has played an important political and social role in the two and a half decades since the end of apartheid. Benefiting from strong Constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and a vibrant civil society, the South African media have contributed to a culture of democratic debate while playing a watchdog role to keep political power to account through investigative reporting into corruption and malfeasance. Despite these positive developments in the emerging democracy, the role of the South African media has also been strongly contested. The media itself bears the characteristics of the continuing severe socioeconomic inequalities in the rest of South African society, and especially the print media have been accused of serving mostly an elite. Normative self-regulatory policy in the country has also been contested and has gone through several revisions in order to be more responsive to the needs of the developing South African society. This article provides an overview of the major issues and debates pertaining to the normative values and ethical practices of the South African media and assesses the extent to which the media emerged as a space where democracy itself was contested.

Effects of journalism on politics "a South African Perspective."

The role of Journalism in South African Politics, 2019

Abstract. The South African political landscape has been filled with politicians and government leaders who controlled the media whether it be directly or indirectly. The Nationalist Party which brought introduced to many of Africans forced language usage and during this time Africans were killed and treated harshly and in order to cover their tracks the government needed to feed the Anglophones fallacy. In this paper, I will point at the current politicized media roles using Daily Maverick as an example and citing from publications of Pauli VanWyk. I also look at the funders of the biggest media companies and groups in South Africa and how the clientelism affects the companies reporting of political news Keywords: Media, politics, socialism, capitalism, nationalism, ideology, nee-liberalism, counter-revolutionary.

Responsible watchdogs? Debating the role of the press in post-apartheid South Africa

2001

The social and political transition that came with the fall of apartheid in South Africa had tremendous significance for the media. The media were actively engaged in the discussion of what role they should serve in the newfound democracy. This book is the result of a research project that scrutinzed more than 100 articles that appeared in the South African press in the post-apartheid years 1996-99. Two main discourses were identified: the watchdog discourse and the nation-building discourse. Those who propagated the watchdog discourse - mainly media representatives - favoured classic libertarian press ideals; while those who propagated the nation-building discourse - mainly government representatives - favoured social responsibility ideals. On the basis of the analysis, the research challenges the dichotomy between watchdog and nation-building discourses. The author discusses how the philosophy of communitarianism might serve as a model to maintain the interests of both the media and national development in an emerging media context. In this perspective, the book is of interest to anyone studying the role of the media in transitional societies.