The media\u2019s influence in any given society correlates strongly with other freedoms and the level of economic development.<\/p>\n
If the scores in Freedom House\u2019s Freedom of the Press 201 index are considered briefly, this tendency is immediately confirmed. The media in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is labelled as \u201cunfree\u201d and the country is without a doubt one of the most piteous in the world. South Sudan and Venezuela show the same correlation. Likewise, Canada is one of the richest countries in the world and its media is also free. The same goes for Finland and Australia.<\/p>\n
There are obviously certain exceptions, like China (the second-largest economy in the world and a growing middle class with solid per capita income) and Singapore (one of the most prosperous and liveable countries in the world). Both have an unfree media landscape and are prosperous (or, in China\u2019s case, on its way to prosperity). These countries are the exception rather than the rule, however.<\/p>\n
Why is the media so important for a country\u2019s success? As the so-called fourth estate, media has an indirect social influence through its ability to determine agendas. It is supposed to hold the political class especially accountable, but in fact any person or institution with power. Yet, it should be a counterweight to tyranny by being the citizenry\u2019s voice and watchdog \u2013 or, rather, it is supposed to be.<\/p>\n
No longer mainstream<\/strong><\/p>\n The mainstream media in South Africa and elsewhere still does exceptional work to expose corruption and hold the government accountable. The media and its publications are exposed to different kinds of dangers such as evil governments, of which the cruel murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian embassy in Istanbul, Turkey is proof. This scale of threat varies from murder to intimidation, and from extrajudicial arrests to the closing of publications \u2013 to name but a few. A record number of journalists were arrested worldwide over the past year, for example.<\/p>\n The credibility and viability of the mainstream media are also threatened in other ways \u2013 and sometimes these are self-inflicted wounds. First, the mainstream media made itself guilty of fake news and blatant falsehoods. The Sunday Times<\/em> recently admitted that it made errors with the articles on the Cato Manor murder gang and the South African Revenue Service\u2019s so-called rogue unit. These are definitely not the only similar errors that the newspaper has committed before, and the Sunday Times<\/em> is surely not the only transgressor. Together with this, a type of vulgarisation occurred in the media landscape with the advent and progress of social media and many other alternative online blogs and publications.<\/p>\n The mainstream media (and more specifically newspapers) determined the discourse and agenda themselves as recently as 30 years ago. Today, you can read someone\u2019s well-known people\u2019s first-hand opinions on Twitter and Facebook, and immediately participate in a debate on issues on the internet (rather than the newspapers\u2019 selective letter columns) without the \u201cmediation\u201d of the mainstream media. This is not necessarily good, and it isn\u2019t always polite, but it is a current reality and it also has benefits. People have many choices today and are not dependant on a handful of gatekeepers, but they must filter out the omnipresent \u201cnoise\u201d themselves. To many people, the mainstream media is no longer the main stream.<\/p>\n Apart from the technological changes and fast-changing demands with which the media and journalists must weather, many journalists and media drive their own agendas and act improperly. I never thought people believe everything that Max du Preez and other leftist commentators say and write. As someone who has been a journalist for a few years and still loves the media, but who today works for a civil organisation with a high media profile and who therefore knows the truth (or then, roughly the truth), I am acutely aware that journalists and commentators often go about it subjectively and with bias. In the process facts are lost, groups and people are stereotyped and labelled, and generalisations (as well as group think) thrive.<\/p>\n Deception as facts<\/strong><\/p>\n A friend of mine recently said that AfriForum received many a beating in the media. Although this is often true, it isn\u2019t not nearly justified. I then told him that media could often be blatantly unfair and attributed things to AfriForum, the Afrikaner and many situations that were simply untrue. This also happened with Donald Trump in the USA, for example (and he also exaggerated); it wasn\u2019t a South Africa-only situation. I very quickly established that what he read as \u201cfacts\u201d in columns had been nothing more than speculations, innuendo\u2019s, sophistries and falsehoods. He could not distinguish between these \u2013 and he isn\u2019t the only one, unfortunately. It becomes a bigger problem if someone is dependent on just a few publications to form their opinions. If you call someone a Nazi or racist, you must be able to provide proof, or rather shut up.<\/p>\n Similarly, I have also realised that my European friends on Facebook have misperceptions about South Africa and the Afrikaner. Some are purposefully misled by local and international media, while others depend on preconceived ideas and little bits of information (correct as well as incorrect) to form a complete picture. This is very dangerous and leads to more perverse choices and influence. These dangers are brilliantly illustrated in Bobby Duffy\u2019s The Perils of Perception: Why we\u2019re wrong about nearly everything<\/em>. It uses as base years of quantitative data by the polling giant Ipsos and shows how the public\u2019s perceptions of events and tendencies such as migration and crime show complete differences with reality. It is a sobering tour de force of a book.<\/p>\n In this era of media fragmentation and diversity, it is therefore important that we endeavour to find the truth in a variety of ways to allow us to make better decisions, among other. And we shouldn\u2019t simply believe something because a well-known person said it in a prominent news website or in a newspaper with a high circulation. The Sunday Times<\/em> is but one example of fallibility. Let us celebrate the media\u2019s role, but at the same time be critical about what we read and watch, and let us demand facts while we do our own verification.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The media\u2019s influence in any given society correlates strongly with other freedoms and the level of economic development. If the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":191047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-en"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":1114,"label":"Blog"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/rawpixel-569600-unsplash-1024x741.jpg",1024,741,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"AfriForum","author_link":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/en\/author\/wianviljoen\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":1114,"name":"Blog","slug":"blog-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1114,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":1096,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","cat_ID":1114,"category_count":1096,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Blog","category_nicename":"blog-en","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/rawpixel-569600-unsplash-scaled.jpg","fimg_url":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/rawpixel-569600-unsplash-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wereldwyd.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}