Political parties’ sad lack of communication

What communications plan are our political parties following? That is something I have been trying to figure out for some time now.

As a journalist, I have found that political media liaisons and spokespeople are among some of the hardest people to reach in this country, even though one of the main functions they serve is to communicate with the public through the media.

Additionally, trying to solicit comment from their political principals is often akin to drawing blood from a stone.

Ask any media practitioner working in any medium and they will tell you a similar tale.

The most recent example of this is the debate that was scheduled for the Johannesburg mayoral candidates on Eusebius McKaiser’s show on 702 earlier this week.

What was meant to be a discussion between the ANC’s Geoff Makhubo, Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF’s) Musa Novela and Democratic Alliance’s Funzela Ngobeni turned into a one-on-one interview between the show’s host and Ngobeni after the other two participants pulled out at the last minute.

Ducking an interview at the 11th hour has become commonplace for both the ruling party and the EFF.

These are the same parties who lament the narrative of negative stories about them. These are stories they often refuse to contribute to when presented the opportunity to exercise their right of reply.

These are also the same parties who refuse to engage with a media house after one unflattering story about them is published or aired.

This behaviour raises a number of questions about their expectations regarding the shape that stories about their parties and the individuals in these parties will take when they refuse to contribute to the composition of them?

It is also curious that these parties accuse certain media houses of being favourable to the official opposition when the opposition are the only ones willing to participate in interviews. The DA is also the only political party that does not blacklist certain media houses who do not exclusively post stories that paint them in the best light.

With that said, it can be concluded that the DA is the only party in SA with a media strategy of sorts.

The worn-out excuse that the media is “white owned” and biased can no longer fly when these parties show such disdain for the very same fourth estate that they hail as “important” in their speeches.

It is not enough to include empty rhetoric about respecting the media and its place in democracy in speeches.

It is about time politicians and political parties show the respect they claim to have for the media by coming to the party and accepting the fact that the media does not exist to serve as an extended arm of their PR and communications offices, whose job it is to make them look good and sweep their blunders under the rug of public consiousness.

Kaunda Selisho.

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