SPI PDMM - What a start!

By Boldwill Hungwe - PDMM Knight Scholar and experienced Zimbabwean journalist

Upon arriving at the Sol Plaatje Institute for Media Leadership to revitalise the entrepreneurial spirit in me that has been dormant for a couple of years, least did I know that it does not take a huge gong to provoke it. In fact, I grew up being told that you can only be a successful entrepreneur or manager if you are exposed to an affluent upbringing where Dad comes back at sunset from work, carrying a briefcase and ask you to park his car in the garage carefully, not to knock down his golf clubs.

You needed no one to tell you that you are going to run your own business in the not so distant future. It was hereditary-from parents to children. But my parents had no car, a golf kit nor even a tuck-shop to run. My Dad, a Pastor, has spent most of his gracious time telling people to be comfortable with whom they are. We were actually told by our elders that the only goal we could reach was a tertiary institute and probably, if God allows, to be a nurse or teacher despite having other aspirations. Running your own company or assuming a managerial position was a pipeline dream.

I remember one day when I awoke from this mindset after reading one of the motivational statements that was said by Dr Myles Munroe (a motivational speaker from Bahamas) that the “world’s greatest wealth is the cemetery-where many big dreams never found their fruition”. Coming from a learning environment where the teacher is the “king” and dictates your learning process and defines you career path, discovering whether you are a leader or entrepreneur took a miracle. No one even told us that by running our backyard vegetable gardens that was the first precise step towards running a business.

It needs such reputable institutes like Sol Plaatji to help people discover their potential and who they are in the world of business. The first day I attended a lecture, I discovered one of the most important attributes about Sol Plaatje Post Graduate Diploma in Media Management curricular. The class is yours. It’s just like “being given money to go on a shopping spree”. The critical part is the choices one makes thereafter. At the same time the Lecturer helps you to navigate through the revealing modules, because obviously we know our destination, but someone else knows the route and terrain.

When I went through the first module with Francis at one moment I thought “business has some spiritual aspect to it”. Analysing some of the case studies, you make some of the most critical decisions about your own life. You are taken through a cleansing process that exposes you, breaks you apart and starts building you anew. The interesting part of the course is that you will be self-evaluating yourself, repositioning your attitudes and redefining who you are as an aspiring manager or entrepreneur. It’s a total change of mindset. And this comes not from anything out of this world but by learning from the mistakes and successes of other prominent business people around the world whom you thought are the “untouchables of this world”.

I have known Francis as veteran African journalist and an avid follower of Formula One, but his teaching method is such a peculiar art and he has taken me into this “business journey” where you certainly have to be rebaptised. In life you just have to be at the right place at the right time. Francis, thanks for the introduction. I feel at home.

Research for community radio: Is it participation, or market research? A case study of community radio stations in South Africa

November 2009 edition of The Media carried an article by Target Group Index (TGI) retired founder Barbara Cooke and South African Advertising Research Foundation’s (SAARF) Paul Haupt. The two research gurus argued over the increase of the SAARF levy to accommodate the new developments and improvements of research technology for data collection. The Double-Screen Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (DS-CAPI) is a state of the art computerised research tool that allows for computer-assisted interviewing. The interviewing technique is an improvement in the data gathering efficacy for SAARF.

On the other hand community media is struggling to conduct simple research, be it for listenership, audience profiles or to encourage audience and listener participation. The SPI conducted a study on formative target audience research with community radio stations to encourage listener participation in programme development. This was undertaken on the assumption that better content will lead to increased listenership and loyalty, which attracts advertising. During the research Thulile Tembe, programme manager at Maputaland radio states generally that in her experience, “good programmes help to attract advertisers”, without making problematic what is meant by ‘good’, or taking into account the volatile nature of the advertising market and advertisers. The research endeavoured to assist stations know their geographic community profile – that is: who are their listeners and what their perception of the station’s content are. The research is a case study of five community radio stations in Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Upington and rural KZN.

One of the key observations from the SPI research is that stations are under pressure to meet the financial bottom line. The case studies: Radio Maputaland, Radio Zibonele, Riverside Radio, Radio Zibonele and Bush Radio were concerned over fulfilling the mandate for development and democracy and generating revenue. Stations have a difficult task of ensuring that they are financially viable and function professionally with regards: financial management, marketing and primarily content development. As Duard Grobbelaar, station manager at Kovise FM puts it “we have to make money to survive.” The balancing of financial imperatives and social responsibility manifests in content decisions to air socially responsible content that caters for the information needs of the geographic community, or the easy way of flooding the airwaves with music and other entertainment content.

Community radio in South Africa has grown since the liberalisation of airwaves in the early nineties – the number of stations with licenses to broadcast, including the number of support initiatives aimed at either training or technical support. However, an area that is still way behind is the financing and funding of operations. Radio stations have to fend for themselves relying primarily on advertising. Given their reduced broadcast radius it means that they can only tap into limited business opportunities for advertising and other forms of funding. Hence, some stations are moving towards satellite radio to find more listeners and attract new advertising revenue.

Two conversations are evident: one is a conversation with business to survive and secondly is the essential conversation that needs to take place with the geographic community. This conflict of interests has influenced content formats. Community stations feel pressure to keep up with commercial radio stations and public broadcast stations as they are all competing for the same advertising revenue. Their formats are tailored to match those of their competitors -- being on-air 24 hours, this requires a staff complement of almost the same size as a commercial station, technical resources, equipment and training. Another issue is the idea of quality and professionalism – stations are pressed to appear professional with little or no formal training and equipment. Mzamo Ngomana, station manager at Radio Zibonele concurs, “We have to meet professional standards.” This perception needs to be interrogated with the view to apprehend what the role of community radio is.

On the issue of formats – programming mostly duplicates commercial radio with content that is increasingly becoming entertainment driven. Breakfast shows, for example, as explained by some presenters at the radio stations, use magazine formats with a focus on celebrity news. However, some stations use the entertainment format to create ‘local celebrities’, honouring ordinary people who have contributed in a positive way towards their community. Radio Riverside has what they call Wat Pla? A segment on the breakfast programme, is a platform for listeners to complain about service delivery and any other issue plaguing the community on-air. These antidotes are used to balance content from becoming too entertainment driven, while they give listeners content packaged in familiar format similar to commercial radio.

With the struggle for financial survival one wonders if the sector can afford activities such as community participation; even when they are noble and imperative, they have become a luxury. Has participation simply become a burden? Community radio developed as a result of communities clubbing together to find a voice distinct from the mainstream, however, they now find themselves on their own competing with the mainstream media for survival. Lack of resources and skilled capacity further disadvantages the sector. Unable to conduct research community radio is struggling to understand local listenership profiles, listenership trends and preferences to tailor content that is relevant, with the potential to increase listenership and attract advertisers. Notwithstanding, there is a possibility that participation platforms i.e. open forums, listeners clubs etc. can be used with a dual purpose, thus helping stations to conduct both community participation and research. In order to fulfil the information needs of the geographic community and have market research that will contribute toward financial sustainability.

According the the Supreme Court of Appeal, something can be factually correct and untrue at the same time. That makes it difficult for journalists.

Harvey Tyson, a former editor of The Star, memorably remarked that editing a newspaper during the dark days of the emergency legislation was like “walking blindfold through a minefield”. The job may be slightly easier these days, but the Supreme Court of Appeal’s judgment in Robert McBride’s defamation case against the Citizen illustrates that some of those landmines are still out there. News media had better tread carefully.

McBride, the former Ekurhuleni police chief, won R150 000 in damages, plus most of his legal costs, from the Citizen for calling him a murderer, a criminal and unfit to be appointed as police chief. The ruling sets off alarm bells for several reasons. For one, it is one of the largest-ever damages awards for defamation in South Africa, and together with legal costs would prove crippling to many a news organisation (if not for the Citizen). It is sure to have a chilling effect on future news reporting and commentary. Secondly, in rejecting the Citizen’s appeal against a High Court ruling, the SCA in effect ruled that it is defamatory to refer negatively to the past actions of someone who has been granted amnesty for those actions by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This could make it very difficult to report and comment on the activities of people who were involved in human rights abuses during apartheid, and received amnesty.

The case arose out of a series of articles around the time it became known that McBride would be appointed as Ekurhuleni police chief. The newspaper argued that he was unfit to be appointed to the post because of he was a “criminal” and a “murderer”. The SCA held that he could no longer be described as a “murderer” or “criminal” for the bombing in 1993 of the Magoo’s Bar, which killed three women and injured a number of other people. McBride, an Umkhontho weSizwe guerrilla at the time, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. He was reprieved in 1991 and released a year later in terms of a presidential pardon that included another murderer, the “Wit Wolf” killer Barend Strydom. McBride subsequently applied for and was granted amnesty by the TRC (not without controversy, as his victims were civilians and not, as required by the amnesty legislation, members of the security forces).

In sueing the Citizen, McBride asserted that he could no longer be called a criminal or a murderer as the amnesty had expunged hi s criminal record. The newspaper argued that the bombing of Magoo’s Bar was a historical fact, and that its views on McBride and his suitability to be a police chief constituted fair comment, which would justify the defamatory nature of the articles. The SCA rejected the Citizen’s defence.

In its majority ruling, written by Mr Justice Pieter Streicher, the SCA held that “people to whom amnesty had been granted should not be held criminally and civilly liable for offences committed by them in the course of the conflicts of the past and with the political object of liberation, but also that they should be considered not to have committed the offences and that those offences should not be held against them, so that they could be reintegrated into society”*. The court conceded that it is a fact that McBride killed people, and that he was convicted of murder. The amnesty cannot erase the historical record. However, the court argued, the effect of the amnesty is that he can no longer be called a murderer. So although it is factually correct to refer to McBride as a “murderer” and “criminal”, the amnesty renders such a reference untrue. According to the convoluted logic of the SCA, something can be factually correct and untrue at the same time! How are journalists to deal with that?

I believe the SCA’s ruling is based on a misunderstanding of the purpose of the amnesty provisions of the Truth and Reconciliation process. Amnesty was not offered to perpetrators of political violence in order to undo the past, or to expunge our history. Perpetrators of human rights abuses were offered a trade-off: amnesty in return for full disclosure. The legislation did not require us to forgive the perpetrators or condone their actions. The intention was to set the record straight; to find out the truth so that we will never repeat the abuses of the past. To argue, as SCA did, that we may now not rely on that truth to express negative opinions about people who have been granted amnesty is just plain wrong. Am I not allowed to comment with distaste about the past of, say, Brigadier Jack Cronje, the former security policeman who, along with four of his henchmen, was granted amnesty for 47 killings of activists? If Cronje were to be offered a high-level post in the police in the new South Africa, would I be liable for defamation if I commented that he would be unsuitable for the position?

In his minority judgment, Mr Justice Khayelihle Mthiyane takes issue with his fellow judges on precisely that score:

“The plaintiff (McBride) contends that the effect of the grant of amnesty is that it is now impermissible to say that he committed murder or is a murderer irrespective of the factual accuracy of that description. That is a far-reaching construction of (the TRC legislation) … The (legislation) nowhere says that it is no longer permissible to refer to what the plaintiff did that caused him to apply for amnesty. That would be (…) wholly contrary to the expressed purpose of the TRC Act which was amongst other things ‘to establish the truth in relation to past events as well as the motives for and circumstances in which gross violations of human rights have occurred, and to make the findings known in order to prevent a repetition of such acts in future’."

The Citizen’s articles, Mr Justice Mthiyane argued, constituted fair comment based on true facts in the public interest, and therefore justifiable. Unfortunately his four colleagues did not agree with him. The Citizen has indicated that it is considering an appeal to the Constitutional Court. I wish them well, although am not sure there is a constitutional issue involved here. As it stands, this judgment is a step backwards for freedom of expression.

*I am quoting from the media summary prepared by the SCA; anyone interested in the full argument, and Mr Justice Mthiyane’s dissenting opinion, should consult the judgment, available here.

(This post also appears on my personal blog, Low Opinions.)

Kenya races ahead of SA to provide varied media menu

By Francis Mdlongwa

A mobile phone company is hurriedly assembling editors and journalists to staff its digital media content distribution hub; a 24-hour television network has been launched both online and offline; and nearly half a dozen private television stations have sprung up.

Welcome to the ‘new’ Kenya. It’s good news for Kenyan audiences, though not necessarily for the incumbent traditional media houses.

The East African nation is quietly racing ahead of South Africa -- long regarded as Africa’s leader in economic, political, military and other fields -- in providing a rich and varied media menu to audiences.

Kenya’s largest mobile phone group, Safaricom, has started hiring editors to comb through local and foreign media to “localise and customise” news stories and information for its mobile subscribers, who, according to the firm’s half-year financials to September 2009, were 15 million in a country of 40 million people.

Could Safaricom be thinking of extending its news service to include deploying its own journalists to cover stories within Kenya and in neighbouring countries? Watch this space.

A new private television station, Kiss Television, which describes itself in Facebook as the “hypiest new TV station in Kenya”, went on air late last year to provide non-stop, 24-hour music for Kenya’s huge youthful audiences.

Operating both offline and online, Kiss serves up a diet of the latest hip hop sounds, rhythm and blues, soul and gospel music. Viewers and listeners phone in or SMS the station or go through the net to select a music video of their choice, which then automatically queues up to play, like the juke box of yesterday’s good, old world.

As well as relying on advertising, Kiss Television’s business model is based on sharing phone-in revenues with its telecoms partner.

Safaricom’s bold entry into journalism and of Kiss TV into the broadcast sector are but only the latest signs of a rapidly growing and dynamic media industry in Kenya since the 1990s liberalisation of the broadcasting and telecoms sectors there.

Safricom’s action in particular has many editors of Kenyan newspapers, radio and television stations worried because it potentially raises significantly competition for audiences among media firms in an already highly segmented and hyper-competitive market.

As David Maingi, head of corporate affairs at Nation Media Group (NMG), the largest media group in East and Central Africa as measured by market capitalisation and media presence in that region, told foreign journalists visiting Kenya recently:

“Kenyan editors are scrambling in all directions searching for answers as to what to do next, wondering about the impact on their media of Safaricom’s entry into the journalistic content market. No one can tell yet what it will be… but we have already been losing a sizeable slice of our market to the current heightened competition.”

As well as the state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, which owns radio stations and a television service, Kenyans now wake up to watch around seven private television stations, most of which broadcast 24 hours across the nation, and to listen to several dozen radio stations, also run by private capital.

The competition for audiences is already stiff and it seems certain it will get tougher in the coming days, weeks and months.

The television stations range from K24, owned by Kenya’s emerging media tycoon and Nairobi University journalism graduate Rose Kimotho; to Nation Television (NTV) and Kenya Television Network (KTN).

NTV is owned by NMG, publishers of the once best-selling Daily Nation and several other newspapers, and KTN is owned by Kenya’s Standard Media Group, which also publishes several newspapers, including the daily Standard.

The news-driven television stations are modelled along the lines of the Atlanta-headquartered Cable News Network and the BBC World Television Service.

But I was most impressed by their fiercely-independent and balanced news, and their well-researched and packaged in-depth news analyses which would be the envy of many people “Down South” and elsewhere around the world. More so in today’s world which is largely dominated by “sound-byte” journalism that gives little meaning and context to the news!

One indicator of growing competition among media is the fact that the daily circulation of the Daily Nation is now around 100,000 versus 200,000 five years ago, Maingi said, noting the big negative impact of the internet and of several media companies that have sprung up in Kenya.

“Through research, we are constantly trying to understand why we are losing these readers,” he said.

“The internet has obviously had a huge impact because it offers free news, but we must re-position ourselves and constantly re-evaluate and renew ourselves if we are still to be the most desirable media leader in this region.”

While it is arguable whether a majority of “monied” Kenyans have access to the internet, it is clear that its advent, combined with new “sensationalist” newspapers which Kenyans brand the “gutter press”, plus new radio and television stations, has significantly raised competition among media for segmented news audiences.





One of the challenges for NMG – indeed for most media around the world– is for the group to work out whether it can make more money out of advertising by going totally online, as the Christian Science Monitor in the US has done, or continuing to serve its audiences with a fuller package offline.

Experience so far from the US shows that newspapers which have moved part of their content online are getting an average of only 12% of their advertising income from this platform – this is despite the fact that most American audiences are online (A year ago, South Africa’s Mail and Guardian reported that its online edition was contributing around 15% of total income).

Of course, the situation in Africa is vastly different, with most audiences and advertisers still relying on the hard-copy editions of newspapers.

In the developed world, advertisers have not exactly followed content online, partly because the advertisers themselves can now go direct to customers using both online and mobile solutions.

One other key lesson for traditional media in the ‘age of discontinuity’, to quote C Christensen, is that they must not willy-nilly jump onto the bandwagon of the digital media platforms, throwing away all the good work which they would have done in the past to be successful.

Yes, they need to experiment and innovate with digital media and never be left behind, choosing what works for their media firms and market. But they need to do much more to perfect their core business (eg being a market leader in investigative journalism or in financial markets reportage) which would have fuelled their success.

Whatever platform media firms choose to use, audiences will still require content that is highly relevant to their needs and wants, is exclusive and helps to improve their lives and is presented accurately, truthfully and in a fair and balanced manner.

Yes, because of the migration of large segments of audiences to digital platforms, especially mobile, it is crucial for a media firm to be present there to experiment with how it can innovatively serve audiences while also making money.

South African media, especially print, should learn a lesson or two from their Kenyan counterparts. One of these is that South African newspapers should take bold steps to prevent a situation like that of the Daily Nation, whose circulation has halved in just a short five years.

There is also a lesson for South Africa from the mushrooming Kenyan media. South Africa needs to move faster in liberalising its broadcast sector so that more players can come in, not just to make the numbers but to add value and diversity in content in a rapidly fragmenting industry.

Sixteen years after South Africa’s freedom, the country south of the Limpopo still has just two main national broadcasters, a development which severely limits audiences’ choices.

Although pay-TV broadcasting licences have been granted to several companies, we are yet to see these come alive and offer a diverse range of content and programming which fosters healthy competition and hopefully gets the nation truly engaged in discourse about how it wants to live and to be governed.

Indeed one could argue that most South Africans can hardly afford to have access to pay television, so there is a need to open up the broadcasting sector to more free-to-air channels for the general public.