This post engages with critical aspects of journalism, particularly the relationship between the media, power structures and audiences with the hopes of understanding how community media (specifically Grocott's Mail come to represent the waste pickers. This is informed by my own journalistic investigation this year and I reflect on material from class and student presentations.
I came to Grahamstown late last year (2017) to study journalism at Rhodes University and I regard myself as an activist-journalist. I have spent years in community mobilisation and making efforts to develop grassroots newsletters. So, I locate myself in the progressive-alternative media tradition of South Africa and not the commercial or nationalist media. I view mainstream media in the country as being out of touch with “labour and life in the townships” (Wigston 2007, 40). My interest is with the people whose voices are not heard. Christian et al. mention that the powerless and oppressed are silenced and in general “do not participate actively in social and political life” of mainstream society (2009, 31). The media does not view them as significant enough to report on or as a potential audience for its products. In any society, there are extensive constituencies who are not formally disenfranchised but are excluded or marginalised by their level of education, income, place of residence, health, race, social problems, criminalisation, or combination of these factors (Christian et al, 2009, 31).
Although these communities are not often represented in the media, when they are, it is in particular ways, such as adopting the role of helpless victims or disruptive protesters. This is particularly when their lives or actions interfere with privileged society and their access to capital (Christian et al. 2009, 31)
I found the views of the director of the South African Reserve Bank Centre for Economic Journalism (SARB-CEJ) at the School of Journalism and Media Studies at RU, Mr Ryan Lee Hancocks, very compelling and it strengthened my passion for an activist-journalism. Mr Hancocks said that this country needs journalists that report about the downtrodden rather than the elites and middle classes. He argued that economics journalism is almost completely silent on the informal economic activities that many of the poor and working class rely on to make ends meet. The informal economy serves millions of people in poor communities and is a significant contributor to the South African economy and it is deplorable that is ignored.
The diploma course on “Institution and Representation” facilitated by Dr Priscilla Boshoff reinforced these points, raising questions about “South African journalism, its institutional production, representational practices and social reception” (course outline). Although Schudson (1999, 118) notes, “Information is what we have – we live in a sea of information,” we need to makes sense of it. There are some key materials that assist, such as the work of Stuart Hall (1980, 2013), Jeanne Prinsloo (2009), Ien Ang (1985, 1990) and work on South African media (Fourie, 2007).
This essay engages with important areas in critical journalism, looking at work that critically analyses the relationship between the media, structures of power and audiences, and seeing how this work can help us understand the media in South Africa and in Grocott’s Mail in particular.
Stuart Hall
Hall (1980, 2013), argues that media presents meanings, and that there is a dominant code of meanings. Ideas or concepts are signified, with meanings represented with signifier or sign e.g. a sound, a printed word or an image. A sign is the encoded form, which is decoded in the concept or mind. But, a sign is complex. Hall argued that denotation and connotation represent primary and secondary meaning of a sign, respectively. We can analyse signs and meanings, by looking at how they fit together and also how people decode them. Hall argue people have to engage the meanings through the signs, but that people can decode them in different ways. The media has to present meanings that people can decode, but it cannot control the decoding:
… If no meaning is taken, there can be no consumption. If the meaning is not articulated in practice, it has no effect. The value of this approach is that each of the moments, in articulation, is necessary to the circuit as a whole, no one moment can fully guarantee the next moment… (Hall, 1980, p. 129).
In order to be effective, for example, broadcasting institutions have to reflect audiences’ socioeconomic and political experiences. But viewers might take a different meaning from the sign presented before them. This means the audience can operates outside the dominant code, said Hall.
Jeanne Prinsloo
Prinsloo used Tzvetan Todorov’s five narratives stages starting from equilibrium (its disruption, realisation, repair and restoration) and Vladmir Propp’s six stages (preparation, complication, transference, struggle, return and recognition) to analyse media texts. She defines narratives as chains of causative events reflected on the scene in a media text. They reflect prearranged media outcomes biased towards a particular hegemony. In news stories, the disruption of equilibrium (“bad news”) or restoration of equilibrium (“good news”) is the predominant narrative elements.
Prinsloo used a University of Cape Town (UCT) advert as an example. This had a picture of two vibrant young men dancing on a stage, one holding a microphone, with UCT’s arch and steps in the background. “Some say success is about who you know,” says the first message, which is untidily arranged, but there is a reply below, in a tidy layout: “We say it’s about where you go.” This is followed by information in point formant about qualifications that UCT offers. In relation with Todorov’s five stages, being worried about future is disrupting equilibrium, and choosing UCT is an attempt at restoration and graduation provides restoration.
Ien Ang
In her paper “Culture and Communication” (1990) Ang argues that “cultural studies” is consciously broad:
It does not seek paradigmatic status, nor does it obey established disciplinary boundaries. Its intellectual loyalties reach beyond the walls of academe to the critique of current cultural issues in the broader sense… is about participating in an ongoing, open ended, politically oriented debate aimed at evaluating and producing critique on our contemporary cultural condition (P.240)
Ang looked how an audience interpreted a television text, the American prime-time soap opera, Dallas (1985). Her “reception analysis” looked at how people created their own meaning and culture, rather than passively absorbing prearranged meanings imposed upon them by broadcasting institutions. As an example, people viewed Dallas through different belief systems and personal interests.
Pieter Fourie et. al.
So, like Hall, Ang stressed that audiences were not just passive, quiet spectators, and that mass media’s power is real but not all-powerful. The works in Fourie (2007), like Wigston (2007), also show this. Wigston (2007) traced the history of media in South Africa, showing that the mainstream press was not able to satisfy many in the public. There was an alternative media that competed with it, especially in the 1980s, and media was also under pressure to adapt to audience demands, like more black readership and more interest in positive news (pp. 51-54).
Students’ presentations in the class
In class, each student had to share their experiences of media in relation with the readings we used during seminars. Students then had to bring an advert, whether from magazine, newspaper or television in class to analyse how its “representation” aspects such as features, colour and words or signs influenced meanings exchanged. This exercise helped us to identify denotation and connation and narrative stages in the media text.
Third, there were presentations that involve looking at masculinity as symbolic aspect used to maintain hegemony. The presentations were from beer adverts to Toyota double cabs (cars), Ariel washing powder and Oreo biscuits. Invariably the products acted as the magic catalyst capable of making you happy and free. The beer and double cab were primarily associated with men and the remaining two with women, linking them as masculine (socialising, adventuring) and feminine (housework and child-rearing), respectively, and thus patriarchal and gendered approach.
We picked up that fusions of city and rural life, in relation with anti-apartheid and youth codes are attached to modern culture, in relation with beer adverts: so people could identify with beer as part of their lives. The use of anti-apartheid and youth and relaxation moments helped to make people think drinking beer symbolises freedom and a better life. We (the class) unanimously concurred during presentations that such adverts reinforces patriarchal norms in a modernised form, and also showed how media is able to incorporate ideas that might seem at odds with the existing system (rebellion, anti-apartheid, the youth) into its system of signs.
Lastly, each student had to interview members of the public who read tabloid newspapers. These papers emerged in South Africa after 2000, and stress sensation, sex and “gore,” avoid politics and are aimed at the working class and poor (Wigston, 2007, p. 52). The research method involves some aspects in Ang’s analysis, the “ethnography of the audience.” We had to present the feedback in the class. The finding was that in Grahamstown (as in other places), poor and working class people prefer to read tabloids, especially the Daily Sun, because it reflects their day-to-day experiences, is affordable and interesting. The problem is that these papers often promote sexism and xenophobia and have low ethical standards (according to Wigston, 2007, p. 52). The progressive-alternative press is extremely weak at present, and the mainstream (quality) newspapers do not deal with the “labour and life” of the masses very much, and it’s tabloids (run by big capitalist firms) that take the space.
We also did peer interviews on how media had influenced our lives. The interviews interacted with readings related to the subject. There is not much research on the media consumption among the students here at Rhodes University, besides the work of Professor Larry Strelitz (like Strelitz, 2001).
Waste pickers
We also had to do our own investigative journalism, and when we did this, we had to reflect on how the media works. My work was on waste pickers who live at the municipal dump in Grahamstown. It is called the Makana municipal landfill, because Grahamstown is part of Makana. I heard about the dump in the community newspaper, Grocott’s Mail. Grocott’s Mail started in 1870 as a Grahamstown newspaper and is the oldest independent newspaper in South Africa (Grocott’s Mail, 2017). It was many town-based white-run newspapers that existed across Eastern Cape by the end of the 1800s (see Wigston, 2007, p. 30). It was taken over by Rhodes University in 2003, and it says “If it’s happening in or around Grahamstown, you’ll read about it in the Grocott’s, whether print or online” (Grocott’s Mail, 2017a).
Grocott’s Mail has several times reported on the dump, noting fires that start there (Grocott’s Mail, 2013, 2014, 2016). The first story I read was in December 2016, and explained how fires at the dumpsite spread to the nearby Grahamstown Riding Club causing damages (26 stables) (Grocott’s Mail , 2016). This story was widely reported in the other papers like the Daily Dispatch, and the Herald and on social media. The same report showed that the municipality had been found guilty in 2015 of breaking waste management rules, and instructed by courts and the government to fix the situation.
Soon after that, I went to the dumpsite with someone who wanted to get rid of rubble. The dump is slightly hidden. We took Cradock Road towards the industrial area of the town, to the west, on the outskirts of Grahamstown. There are no clear signs of where the dumpsite is, until you get closer. We carried on with Cradock road, on its gentle curve, and suddenly we saw a wide gouge, which released an unpleasant smell, and saw the whole area around it was scattered with plastic bags, far beyond the dump.
I immediately knew this was the place we are looking for. We had to turn around, back to an intersection, to find the road that goes to the dumpsite. The driveway into the landfill is a gravel road through the bushes. Then we were in the dump. The place was a disaster zone in the middle of nowhere. It was filthy and full of litter and rubbish, scattered everywhere with no system. A group of young men was loitering by the gate chasing after any car or truck going inside. There was no control over entry, no municipal staff.
The owner of the car, which I was in, got annoyed as the youths ran after the car. This annoyance is common among middle class people taking waste to the dump. But I was more shocked to see people pacing up and down in the filthy place, wearing dirty ragged clothes. My thoughts could not believe my eyes, thinking these are human beings like everyone and myself. They ran after cars and trumps, so they could pick through the rubbish, even for food, and beg for tips. I was moved by the poverty and desperation that I witnessed.
The earlier articles in Grocott’s Mail had been silent on this terrible side of the dump. The focus had been on how the dump often had lingering fires and how these spread out towards the town, affecting business like the GRC. The 2016 article spoke of how the fires affected the ability of GRC to host “eight or nine big multidisciplinary shows a year, attracting riders and their entourages from across the province and the country... an important source of income for the Club” and the dangerous fumes from the fires, but did not mention people were living at the dump and would have been even more terribly affected. These are exactly the sort of “excluded or marginalised” people who are ignored in the media (Christian et al, 2009, p.31). The fires lasted four weeks reported an article in Daily Dispatch (early 2017), which also stressed effects on GRC and “residents” of the town, and added the municipality had never acted on the court orders to fix the dump (Carlisle, 2017). It said that Grahamstown “residents” were looking into more legal action against the municipality. (Later in middle of the year, it was reported that officials were facing contempt of court charges and another fire had started (Grocott’s Mail, 2017c).
After that, I saw a story in Grocotts’ Mail titled “Narrow Escape for Dumpsite Stabbing Victim” (Grocott’s Mail , 2017b). The story, from February 2017, argued the site was “unsafe for any member of the public,” after a man got stabbed in the arm there. It said that a stabbing took place after a man living at the dump supposedly broke the tailgate (closes back of bakkie) of a bakkie belonging to a man who came to the dump. An argument broke out and the driver was stabbed. According to Grocott’s Mail, the victim said the tailgate “need to be manually chained to secure it.” The article quoted him as saying there were “whole gangs moving in and out of there.” The paper also said about 10 people lived there.
The point is the people living at the dump were mentioned at last but now as “gangs,” and clearly, also not “any member of the public.” The fact that the dump was dangerous for those who lived there, the very same waste pickers presented as “gangs,” who also faced fires and filth, and terrible conditions, was not discussed. Instead, they were presented as a faceless group who “feel nothing for taking a person’s life.” South Africa is one of the countries with a very high violent crime rate, and this affects many lives, but no picker was even interviewed about what happened. The Facebook page of the Grahamstown Residents’ Association (GRA), representing mainly middle class interests from the western suburbs of Grahamstown and a lot of the readership of Grocott’s Mail, has also referred to waste pickers chasing cars entering into the dump as using a “mob tactic,” also suggesting gangster behaviour at the dumpsite. The situation is very much that described by Christian et al (1990), where the working class and poor are marginalised in the media, mainly appearing as dangerous or disruptive threats.
Christian et al (1990, p. 116) also argues “the press tries to meet the economic and cultural demands of owners and many different clients, including publicists and prospective audiences,” and since Grocott’s Mail seems to have a mainly suburbs audience, and does not have waste pickers as a market, it is likely to take that audience’s views seriously. The paper, like others, might be internally pluralist and “monitorial,” and aiming at being objective to everyone (poor or rich), who deserve an equal hearing, but in reality, they are skewed (Christians et al, 2009, pp. 118 & 125). This does not mean the stabbing was okay (in fact the man who did it was arrested), but that one case was used to make claims about a large group of people, who were not allowed to reply.
This bring us to the Marxists, who influenced people like Hall (1980). Marxist media analysis insists the objectivity principle of the media is more fiction than truth, as mass media is mainly run by capitalists or capitalist governments and represents their interests to present the world in a certain way that secures their hegemony (Sonderling, 2007). As said, the Grocott’s Mail presents says, “If it’s happening in or around Grahamstown, you’ll read about it in the Grocott’s, whether print or online” (Grocott’s Mail, 2017a). But the balance tilts in reality to who are the main audience and has power to express themselves. Grahamstown has divided communities resulted from our history of politics, capitalism, colonialism and apartheid, and can be seen as example of media only expressing some views and representing some people (see Sonderling, 2007, pp. 310-322). This despite saying “you’ll read about it in the Grocott’s.”
On March 23 2017, I started visiting the people at the dumpsite, the waste pickers, and since then I have been back on many occasions and I found the dumpsite generally safe. Safe but not for the waste pickers who work under stressful and health hazardous conditions without any protections or rights. The Grocotts’ Mail articles keep stressing them as people who are not “legitimate” on the site, and the municipality keeps promising to deal with them. Around 10 live at the dump, but there are more than 200 waste pickers at the dumpsite found on a normal day. Among them, there are old age pensioners and women. I have done some articles on them, and I found that it was poverty and unemployment and home issues that drove people to the dump to try get food, tips or materials to sell. The lead paragraph in Grocotts’ Mail (2017c) says is “It is unsafe for any member of the public to go to the municipal dump,” but are not these people also members of the public? Or Grahamstown “residents”?
Many of the waste pickers are nice people, yet Grocotts’ Mail has distanced itself from them, and has yet to interview someone from the dumpsite. When I asked why, a Grocotts’ Mail official told me the dumpsite is dangerous, the police warned against the dumpsite, and the paper would therefore not take such a risk. But surprisingly Grocotts’ Mail have a plethora of photographs from the dumpsite, which were taken at the site, so it does go there, it just does not interview people there. Even more sadly, I found that one of Grocott’s street paper sellers stays at the dumpsite and is one of the waste pickers. Some residents against the municipality also show this side of silence in reporting on the ongoing court case over the dump, which stresses issues like GRC but nothing about waste pickers (Grocotts’ Mail, 2017c).
Since there are hundreds of people at the site, it is hard to think that the problem is no-one being available. With regard to the dumpsite-stabbing story, efforts to interview the police, government and business officials were prioritised even though no-one from the government, sate or business was present at the event, other than the victim himself, who was described as an employer who had two assistants with him during the unfortunate incident. Prinsloo (2009) mentions that “news media” focusses mostly on the disruption of equilibrium (“bad news”) and this helps explain when, why, and how Grocotts’ Mail report on issues around the dump. For example, waste pickers are the most immediately expose to fires and health hazard at the dump, and would be the main victims of “gangs” if these were at the dump, and have no rights, no power to take the municipality to court and are seen by that municipality as a problem. The issues of the dump as reported are without taking into consideration that the waste pickers are on the firing line in many ways. These human beings like everyone, yet obviously ignored and only mentioned (when mentioned) remembered as thugs and gangsters, when they, not the GRC or GRA, are the main victims of the disastrous mess of the dump and come from the sad conditions many working class and poor Grahamstown residents face daily.
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