Editorial discretion and transparency

| Friday July 2, 2010 00:00

If it has cropped up it has often been in regard to government media and in situations where the private media houses accuse government of using advertising revenues to seek to influence them.  I, however, feel that it is time the subject is looked at in regard to the private media houses themselves in isolation from government.

My concern is that private media houses always talk about transparency, but have not themselves opened up.  I am not here concerned with editorial discretion as regards proprietary interests of the private media houses and guarding against hate, incitement or hatred.  I am here concerned with the level of transparency as regards freedom of expression and how the private media houses draw a balance between editorial discretion and freedom of expression.

How transparent is the process of striking this balance?It seems to me that to properly understand what the issue is about one must contrast what happens on radio to what happens in the print media. During a radio phone-in programme the callers have sometimes called in to act as a check on the presenter who in their view seems intent on suppressing certain viewpoints. There is, therefore, in radio some level of transparency in that the listeners can see a process taking shape and make up their own minds based on the process that they are part and parcel of. With regard to the print media there is no such level of intimacy. The editor, in complete secrecy, determines what goes into the newspaper. There is no transparency as regards what the editor has determined not to be suitable material for his paper.  In such a situation the consumer of the print media house's product is denied variety and an opportunity to know of availability of such variety. I am therefore of the view that private print media houses leave a lot to be desired as regards transparency.

Much as they expect transparency from others they do not seem to have developed any process that will ensure transparency as regards to how they exercise editorial discretion.

It seems to me that our print media houses want us to take it as a given that they are angels and have no biases. There is no reason that informs this expectation. The issue is not about trust. In much the same way that there are established structures like parliament that supposedly act as a check on the executive, one would expect the private media houses to have a structure that checks their excesses in their enjoyment of editorial discretion.

Given that media houses are highly influential it is imperative that there be checks and balances against abuse of editorial discretion.

In the political arena we have witnessed situations where political party activists are also columnists. This will tend to give a disproportionate opportunity for the activist to push his political party's agenda to the detriment of open and fair articulation of issues by all.

The danger of this situation is that much as the media houses profess to uphold the right to information they invariably work against this right.I should not be understood to be calling for government regulation of the media. What I am asking for is for the media houses to demonstrate to us how they strike a balance between competing interests.

There is no doubt that our people have freedom of information.How do our media houses promote this right? I am not here concerned with investigative journalism, but the narrow but important area of suppression of information. I do not believe that our media houses can with all honesty say that they have never suppressed exposure of viewpoints that are contrary to theirs. I know this because I submit articles to some media houses and have observed that there are certain positions that they suppress.  The issue is that their readers have no way of knowing that they have suppressed a particular viewpoint. The media house will hide behind editorial discretion but will not disclose to the readers that there is a particular viewpoint that it was uncomfortable with, and that it used its editorial discretion to suppress that viewpoint.

I suggest that editors must disclose if they have suppressed a particular submission so that the readers know. They must also set out why they suppressed the submission.  In my view there is no openness and transparency in an editor just saying he used his editorial discretion not to publish a particular article. The discretion used in this manner is too wide and is effectively unfettered. As we all know, unfettered discretion has no place in this day and age.

My understanding of the main gripe that the private media has with the current Media Practitioners Act is that a politician will have power over the media and will likely use such power to protect his interests. Effectively the media houses are suggesting that a minister will have unfettered discretion and use the same to protect his interests. One may ask if there is any difference between a minister and an editor as regards exercise of unfettered discretion. In my view they are both human beings and will use whatever space they have to protect their interests even if such interests conflict with the public good.

It is therefore not enough for the media to seek to self regulate and fail to promote transparency. Our media industry therefore owes us a duty to tell us how in its self-regulation it promotes and ensures transparency to protect freedom of expression and freedom of information. These freedoms are first and foremost to be enjoyed by every human being. The media houses cannot and should not be allowed to appropriate these freedoms and to alienate our people from their enjoyment.

In my view editorial discretion exercised in secrecy creates an opportunity for suppression of these freedoms. Our private media have often reported on alleged deterioration of democracy in Botswana. In my view it makes no sense to have an explosion of media houses when such is not met by an explosion in the space for freedom of expression and freedom of information because editors use editorial discretion in secrecy to suppress particular viewpoints. Such secrecy works against democracy. Our media houses must not treat us like immature children.

They must actively promote robust debate of issues. I have observed that of late contributors to newspapers have moved away from insulting each other. In the past people would waste space presenting their credentials and those of their adversaries. Invariably their adversaries would be called all sorts of names. Now we have moved on.

Our editors must compliment this process by not abusing their editorial discretion to suppress viewpoints that they may be against.

Our editors will be mistaken if they think that allowing rebuttals is promotion of freedom of expression and freedom of information. It is only part of the process. Freedom of expression includes freedom to publish even issues that may make some favoured people look in a bad light. It is not proper for an editor to promote a particular viewpoint about an individual and to suppress anything that may present such individual in a bad light.

In my observation this is what has been taking place lately in our print media houses. It seems they have collectively agreed to ensure that submissions that place a particular politician in a bad light are to be suppressed.

There is no way that this can be said to be in the interests of democracy or freedom of expression and freedom of information.  Within the arena of freedom of expression there are no sacred cows. Each and every politician is fair game. At the entrance of the Spiritual Healing Church at Extension 2 in Gaborone there is a verse that says something about people who now know the truth, and who are now no more following the old ways.  We have become enlightened and now know what constitutes freedom of expression and freedom of information. Our media houses should not try to pull us back into the dark. It does not serve our nation well for editors to use editorial discretion in secret to keep us in the dark.

Lediretse Molake