Ways of ‘seeing’ the Johannesburg CBD burning building
Connotations of news reporting
Extending the coverage of ideology and ideological struggle:
I am now introducing another theme into my articles on ideology on the Medium platform, in addition to critically unpacking the ideologies of Zionism and anti-Zionism.
I want to explore how the overall ideology of neo-liberalism plays itself out in the urban development and housing landscape in my country, South Africa, something that I have referred to tangentially in one or more of my earlier articles. I am doing this because I see the interconnections between the anti-apartheid and anti-colonial struggle of the people of Palestine and the globally hegemonic ideology of neo-liberalism.
I have studied the latter in the course of being a development studies student and graduate at university but also as an activist-non governmental organisation (NGO) member in the field of development during South Africa’s political and constitutional transition. And latterly as a professional consultant to the sclerotic human settlement bureaucracy of the South African state.
My professional consulting work led to the establishment of a company INSITE, through which I and colleagues provided policy and strategy development services primarily to South Africa’s three spheres of government. The services were in respect of housing and urban development strategies. At more or less the same time with Mike Hyland I founded Stellenbosch Transparency, through which we published stories about how local elites and government in our town, Stellenbosch, were becoming more and more removed from a grassroots citizenry that was becoming increasingly restless about its living conditions. The situation was characterised by acute housing shortage, poverty, inequality and unemployment. Mike and I became aware of how mainstream media in our town (and nationally) effectively filtered out of its reportage an authentic bottom-up grassroots view of the system and remained practically disengaged from citizen-led housing struggles that emerged strongly between 2017 and 2020.
Our critical interest in the main-stream media’s reportage, extended to issues elsewhere in South Africa, that showed up systemic problems in our society. We have decided to run a media monitoring and analysis project for the next several months, through which to track how reportage is playing out on specific news items.
The first event that we are analysing is the burning of the Usindiso building in Johannesburg and consequently the tragic loss of life.
The following is a trailer about an on-line discussion between Mike and I, based on analysing three articles about this event from different media platforms. I follow this with a written synopsis of a longer blog posted on the Stellenbosch Transparency website.
A synopsis by Paul Hendler, Stellenbosch Transparency.
Preface:
In the early hours of the morning of 31 August 2023 the Usindiso building in central Johannesburg, caught fire, resulting in the deaths of at least 63 people, including children. The event occupied centre stage on radio newscasts that I listened to later that day. This brief article reflects on the manner in which this event was first reported by three news publishers, The South African, Eye Witness News (EWN) and The Independent on Line (IoL).
This first reflection provides readers with a view of each publication’s slant on this news event and could be followed by further reflections on how future reporting of the event plays out. I intend to base these reflections on a broader sampling of news reports across a range of other publications, in addition to the above three.
The purpose of these exercises in describing and analysing news reportage, is to contribute to a holistic understanding of why and how this event occurred and what needs to be done to ensure that this is not repeated in a future tragedy.
My personal mission is to seek to uncover the truth in the reported news. This mission could be criticised as an exercise in futility, based on the view that there is no way to arrive at an objective assessment of the news and of facts because each report reflects the biases of the reporter and his/her editors and sub-editors. But, there is a higher-level bias in favour of the truth understood not only as fact but as the outcome of probable cause. The route to this is through rational debate, multiple interactions and iterations. [1]
Artificial Intelligence and its function:
This article strives to initiate this process by analysing the commonalities and differences in the content reported as well as in the style of the reporting, based on summaries provided by artificial intelligence (AI), which has its own built-in biases that one should always be aware of. The AI summaries are in response to my key questions about article sentiment, political leanings or biases, and socio-political implications. The reason for using AI is to enable me to make comment and analysis on trends emerging from a significant number of articles by a range of media platforms, which I would be unable to complete manually in a relatively short space of time.
Agreed ‘facts’:
The following facts do not appear to be in dispute between the three articles. The Usindiso building had been hijacked. Criminals controlled the tenants and collected rent. They neglected to invest in maintenance though. Thus, the building was in a dilapidated state, and exposed to disaster risks, including fire hazard. All three articles note that this destruction of life, limb and property highlights challenges and implications for Johannesburg’s inner city as well as South Africa’s social, economic, and political landscape.
Different foci:
Each of the articles provides a specific, different focus.
The South African article focuses on the perspective of ex-Johannesburg mayor, and leader of the political party Action-SA, Herman Mashaba and his frustrations with the African National Congress (ANC) government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
The IoL article highlights the calls from the Johannesburg Property Owners and Managing Agents (JPOMA) to address the problem of hijacked buildings, emphasizing the impact on tenants and businesses.
The EWN article provides updates on the building fire and the efforts of emergency services to contain it.
My bias:
My interest in the reporting of this event arises from my own study of housing and residential shelter in South Africa, and more specifically my working in the affordable rental market in Johannesburg several decades ago. I spent five years between 1999 and 2004 working in residential rental property in central Johannesburg.
I am also acquainted with the NGO Socio-Economic Rights Institute (or SERI), which champions the rights of inner-city tenants and undocumented migrants.
Political-economy of the media:
It is interesting to reflect on understanding the determinants of the media platforms’ biases. Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky, in their 1995 book ‘Manufacturing Consent — The Political Economy of the Mass Media’ put forward a framework of five filters that progressively exclude certain facts and views from a news stories about United States foreign policy. I have used these, in a slightly adapted form, as my framework of analysis.
I propose to test this model for its efficacy in explaining the shaping of this — and other — news stories elsewhere, specifically in and about contemporary South Africa. I complete this article with reflecting on the ownership and control of the three media outlets whose articles I have considered here, and explore the application of the other filters in future articles about other news stories about this and other events.
Conclusion:
This article analyses the reporting by three news articles of the Usindiso building fire in Johannesburg. Each of the three news articles presented a particular lense through which they viewed the event of the building fire. In considering how in each case the news was focused by being filtered, it is useful to find out which parties and interests own and control each of the media companies identified. My article identifies the ownership of EWN by Primedia Broadcasting, which in turn is owned by the Primedia Group. IoL is owned by Sagarmartha Technologies Ltd, a subsidiary of the Sekunjalo Group which also owns a majority stake in Independent Media. The South African claims to be independently owned by a private company with no affiliation to any other media group (or political party or religious organisation) and funded mainly through advertising revenue.
To link the news choices of these article to the five filters identified above requires further detailed study based on anecdotal research in respect of the potential filtering at each of the five stages. With respect to the first filter, it could be that the focus on getting the news out competitively, and rapidly, militates against interpreting the event within a political economy framework: the owners and advertisers likely do not have this mindset, focused as they are likely to be on immediate revenue and achieving their bottom lines (i.e. covering all costs and profit margins).
The news discourse of these articles is congruent with the likely neo-liberal assumptions[2] held and articulated by the shareholders/owners of the media platforms. None of the articles offers any canvassed opinion about how to address the contextual political-economy determinants of this tragic and problematic event.
To read more about these neo-liberal assumptions and their practical implications for the field of journalistic publication, please read the full article at Stellenbosch Transparency.
Paul Hendler, Stellenbosch 12 October 2023.
[1] This implies that there is always logical and expected reasons behind the outcome of events. The deeper complexity here is that the ‘logical and expected reasons’ are themselves an interpretation based on a particular lense (view of the world) that is usually limited in nature by biases and in some cases awareness and the ability or inability for greater depths of insight. Absolutely why the need for free speech and open rationale debate is essential.
