The state of South African media: a space to contest democracy
#MMPMIDC7330882
Wasserman H
?-/-? 2020[]; 65
(3
): 451-65
PMIDC7330882
show ga
The South African media has played an important political and social role in the
two and a half decades since the end of apartheid. Benefiting from strong
Constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and a vibrant civil society,
the South African media have contributed to a culture of democratic debate while
playing a watchdog role to keep political power to account through investigative
reporting into corruption and malfeasance. Despite these positive developments in
the emerging democracy, the role of the South African media has also been
strongly contested. The media itself bears the characteristics of the continuing
severe socio-economic inequalities in the rest of South African society, and
especially the print media have been accused of serving mostly an elite.
Normative self-regulatory policy in the country has also been contested and has
gone through several revisions in order to be more responsive to the needs of the
developing South African society. This article provides an overview of the major
issues and debates pertaining to the normative values and ethical practices of
the South African media and assesses the extent to which the media emerged as
a space where democracy itself was contested.
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