SA media now paying the price for prejudice

If the once-respected Argus newspaper group had not been gifted to incompetent proprietors, South African media would now be in better shape.

In 1994, the Argus group was sold to Independent News & Media (INM) chief executive Tony O’Reilly. Titles included The Star, Cape Argus, Daily News, Cape Times, Pretoria News, Sunday Tribune and Sunday Independent.

For nearly two decades INM in SA subsidised its floundering parent company in Ireland. Jobs were shed. From 5,223 employees in 1994, there were about 1,500 in 2013. O’Reilly scarcely invested in technology.

All newspaper circulations were affected by digital media. But underfunding also nudged INM downwards.

A more precipitous decline began when in 2013, Iqbal Survé used other people’s money to buy the group for R2 billion. Funders include China Africa Development Fund and a Chinese state-owned television corporation.

That’s why you see so much pro-Chinese content dressed up as news, competing with coverage extolling Survé’s virtues.

Now the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) wants to liquidate Survé’s company to recover R609,203,987. The PIC handles the Government Employees’ Pension Fund. Survé can’t repay pensioners’ money he’s used.

One person who sought to acquire the Argus publications in 1994 would have kept the newspapers in better shape. And he is very different from the above losers. Where O’ Reilly and Survé seek the limelight, Terry Moolman keeps a low profile. And he doesn’t get into the kind of debt that sunk O’Reilly and Survé.

Disclosure: Moolman appointed me editor after Caxton took over The Citizen in the late ’90s.

As Caxton’s chief executive, Moolman has served the media well over decades. Caxton has trained hundreds of journalists through their academy, and by offering university students opportunities for practical experience. The Caxton network of local and regional titles provides a springboard.

Caxton hosts regular workshops and conferences on feature writing, media law, investigative journalism, politics, photography and layout trends. Being a judge at the annual Caxton Awards was for me always an eye-opener to the wealth of talent being nurtured.

By hiring the best legal team for a Constitutional Court case, The Citizen vs McBride (2011), Moolman struck a blow for media freedom. The judgment clarified what is fair comment.

Caxton leadership would have been better for the Argus Group than O’Reilly or Survé. Former Caxton chair Frederik van Zyl Slabbert knew this when, in 1994, he wrote to Doug Band, then CEO of Argus Holdings:

“I cannot find it in me to congratulate you on the Argus/O’Reilly deal, as I believe it is wrong in both the manner and substance for the future of the press in SA.”

The late David Gleason wrote in 2011 that Slabbert was “expressing deep dissatisfaction, anger and sadness at the manner in which he and Moolman had been treated by Band” and others over the Argus deal. Moolman’s offer to buy Argus was reportedly comfortably the best.

Slabbert wrote: “When push comes to shove, rather let the future of the press in SA be trusted to the Irishman than to two local hairy-backs.”

Such prejudice had a price.

Martin Williams, DA councillor and former editor of The Citizen.

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