Media’s misreporting and bias exposed in GNU talks

For the past fortnight, the public has been watching in rapt befuddlement the complex negotiations taking place behind closed doors to assemble a government of national unity (GNU).

Almost as mystified has been the media.

It’s virtually a done deal, Business Day assured its readers late on Wednesday night. “We are taking the deal,” said a Democratic Alliance (DA) source.

An ANC leader said: “There are no roadblocks. We are comfortable with what has been proposed.”

Not so, reported News24 barely half a dozen hours later President Cyril Ramaphosa had now withdrawn an earlier offer of some of the influential departments the DA wanted. The DA had until tomorrow to decide whether to accept.

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This toing and froing, the giving with the one hand and taking away with the other, might have been Ramaphosa’s negotiating tactics. On the other hand, it might have been a response to real pressure.

There’s strong antipathy from the ANC tripartite alliance partners to a deal with the DA, as well as the ANC buccaneers who would avoid any compromises with the DA by simply buying the support of a dozen or so MPs from the smaller parties.

The GNU has been challenging not only for the politicians. The coverage of the negotiations has cast a harsh light on the shallowness of South African journalism.

It has also shown how blurred the line between factual reporting and opinion has become in newsrooms and how gullible – or maybe more accurately, how partisan – some journalists are. Speculation is reported as fact, hope as imminent reality.

One example, replicated across print, online and broadcast news outlets, is particularly worthy of comment because it illustrates not only the lack of basic reading and writing skills, but the mainstream media’s antipathy towards the DA.

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The reports, on yet another hiccup in the negotiations, referred repeatedly to the DA’s “outrageous and outlandish demands”.

However, they consistently neglected to mention, for context, that this was – surprise, surprise! – the ANC’s assessment of the DA’s position.

BusinessLIVE’s Peter Bruce took up this incident in his column.

“When the DA put a list of ‘preferred’ positions suggesting a variety of possible ministries,” writes Bruce, “the ANC not only leaked the letter from DA federal executive chair Helen Zille to the media, but it and many media houses then spent much of Monday and Tuesday treating the letter as if the DA were demanding all of the [departments] mentioned. Cue media hysteria and wild misreporting.”

Bruce writes that despite not having a great election, the DA solidified its position as the second-biggest party.

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“Attempts to somehow delegitimise it now that it is asking no more than its due in a government it has been invited into, with the media sadly complicit, have been disgraceful.”

Basic fact-finding journalism has become as rare as hens’ teeth. The mostly poor and slanted coverage of the GNU negotiations – and of the election – is a reminder that cheap journalism comes at a high cost.

The gears of democracy don’t mesh properly when much of the media has given up being watchful, even-handed and unafraid.

Yesterday talks were again at an impasse. Ramaphosa, according to reports, was accusing the DA of “moving the goalposts”, wanting to form “a parallel government”, “wilfully misinterpreting” ANC statements, being “misguided”, and acting in an “offensive, condescending” manner “inconsistent with the constitution”.

So, what was the DA’s response? Sorry, I don’t know. No reporter as yet seems to have thought to ask them.

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