He says something we know all too well as we sit here on the Queen’s Mud Patch and try to understand from inept media reports what the hell is actually happening in SA. Chris writes: “The standard of journalism is South Africa is, I believe, at an all time low. The mission statement of many of our mass media hacks seems to be job retention at all costs and the good old fashioned notion of telling both sides of they story is as dead as a dodo.
“For editors there is no doubt in my mind that increasing readers, viewers and listeners has taken precedence over relevance and balance… Opinion is an important part of the mass media, but that opinion should be confined to columnists who know what they are talking about – Jonathan Jansen and Justice Malala, for example – and not just any young Tom, Dick or Thabo who is fresh out of Rhodes University.”
Oom Chris also wrote recently about the SABC (known to us as the SA Broadcorping Castration): “Frankly, I cannot see the SABC ever becoming genuinely sustainable until such time as its political masters lower their pie-in-the-sky expectations and the SABC itself develops a testicle or two.
“Of course, it’s awfully difficult to have the balls to stand up to the pressures of party politics when the hand that is steering the ship is part and parcel of party politics.
“It must be extremely frustrating for the people who work for the SABC. They keep getting told that neither government nor the majority party in parliament has any direct influence, because they know that is complete rubbish.”
Sommer lekker. Now if Chris can get stuck into The Mother City’s largest embarrassment – Die Burger (better known as Die Buiger) – we might quote him again.
