Caeri Dunnell and Sizwe H
Through using Haas’s public philosophy for public journalism, we gained many things. Firstly, by listening to the people on the ground instead of getting story ideas from official sources, we found out what was really affecting the community of Ward 10 and 11. We found out that residents felt ignored by the municipality, marginalised because they live in the so-called ‘coloured’ area, and this is why they felt that the 6 houses affected by the 2008 tornado were still unfixed.
Our main source who actually notified us about Patricia’s situation was Ms Elena May who is the ward councillor of Ward 11. She claims to have worked extensively with the tornado affected families and she seemed to know them personally. She provided us with the addresses and the names of the occupants of the houses. When we got there, we were introduced to Ms Eumalda who is one of the neighbours and her house is amongst the six houses we had initially targeted for our story. Eumalda personally introduced us to the rest of the affected residents. We used Eumalda as our catalyst, she took us around to the houses affected and almost acted as a citizen or native journalist; introducing us to the neighbourhood, translating our questions to people who did not understand English and putting people at ease.
Public journalism is about “promoting public problem-solving” according to Haas, and therefore we tried to act as a link between the citizens and the municipality in order to get the problem solved. Haas proposes that “the public sphere (of journalism) and civil society (of civic organisations) be seen as standing in an explicitly dialectic and mutually supportive relationship” (41), but although this makes sense in theory, in practice it did not. We wanted to show our soundslide to the municipality to get their feedback and their side of the story, but it appears that the civil political society in South Africa does not wish to enter a ‘mutually supportive relationship’ with journalism. We were interested in exploring the possibility for a collaborative role between us as Active Voices and the Makana municipality; according to Christians definition where the media and the state have a symbiotic relationship – the media obtains official comment on newsworthy issues and the authorities’ views get disseminated to the public with no extra effort. If the municipality had been willing to co-operate it could have been beneficial to all involved; the unfixed houses would be brought to the municipality’s attention, they would fix Patricia’s roof and this service delivery would be broadcast to the community as an example of how the municipality does care and does act. In the theory we examined, the problem with the collaborative role was always from the journalistic point of view- to avoid propaganda and abuse by the government. But in our experience, the problem lies more with the authorities who are ‘mistrustful’ and ‘suspicious’ of journalists and their role.
When the municipality refused to watch our soundslide and kicked us out their meeting, although we were on their official agenda, we turned to other areas of civil society in order to set the problem solving in motion. We were overwhelmed by the response; the very first appeal we made (to D&A Timbers) was answered, the manager merely asked; “how much do you need?”, and “what is the address we can deliver it to?”, without even watching the soundslide. The roof is set to be fixed on Saturday 9 October, which is an achievement of our objectives.
Our objectives at the start of the CMP course was to highlight the breach of human rights in the case of the tornado victims, find answers to why the roofs had not been fixed and potentially come to a solution where either the municipality agreed to act on their promises, or local businesses filled the gap and provided assistance. To be honest, we did not expect the municipality to listen, and we also did not expect businesses to be so generous, but our goals were clearly thought through and arose out of our great desire to see something done about the situation. Although somewhat optimistic to expect change, we both felt that if we ended the project and Patricia still lived in a house with a huge hole with water pouring in during the wet season, we would give up hope in journalism and possibly shed some tears.
We decided to tell the story from a personal, human interest angle, focusing specifically on Patricia Bouwer and her family, whose roof was the worst affected. Apparently people are more likely to identify with and respond to one face of suffering, as they are generally overwhelmed by masses of suffering people. Our story was alternative to mainstream journalism because of this, as the story had appeared in Grocott’s previously, with a more factual, non-biased slant. Officials such as Lena May were approached, and municipality spokesperson Thandi Matibise also commented. Patricia was given one line in the article, and the reader was left with no definite impression of the extent of the damage, or an emotional connection to the people involved. It sounded like another complain/sob story. When we visited the people affected and heard their stories, saw their roofs, we were moved to action; and in the same way we wanted our viewers to feel this compassion and compulsion to help. Therefore we used a very subjective mode of storytelling, allowing Patricia to tell her own story in her own language, and deliberately advocated her cause, leaning more towards advocacy journalism. Our soundslide ended on an appeal for help, and did not use any official sources, which is not very mainstream journalistic.
Our target audience for the first soundslide was very clearly people in a position to help – the municipality and businesses. The way we covered the story we were expecting some kind of deliberation from the public. It was intended to spark public debate about the lack of self initiative from the from the victims of unfortunate circumstances for example in Patricia’s case, the mini tornado that struck Grahamstown in 2008. Our initial intention with the story was to get a comment from the municipality about why Patricia’s roof has not been fixed yet. We expected anything from a timeline (of a possible waiting list) to any legitimate reason. Because of the nature of our story, we did not necessarily need to have other voices. We were not intending on challenging anyone, or expose the slowness of service delivery, but all we needed was try to help Patricia get a roof for her house hence our story did not include diverse views.
We however attempted to include the input from the municipality. That focus group did not work out as planned. We moved on to speak to the people at FAMSA (Family and Marriage Association of South Africa) to see if we could get any advice about Patricia’s situation. They promised to help Patricia in whatever way they could as long as that assistance was only psychologically based.
Our second soundslide will show the roof being fixed, and act as advertising for D&A Timbers as well as a ‘How to’ piece for the community, enabling them to fix their own roofs if they have the material. This will enable development.
Through this process we went through many emotions; feeling shocked and upset at the conditions Patricia was living in with her one month old baby, sympathising with the other residents affected, feeling frustrated and helpless when the municipality refused to listen and hopeful when the businesses acted out of generosity. With regards to the actual process of the story, we felt constrained by deadlines as well as the soundslide format (although it was very effective) and constrained in terms of transport to the township. I feel more part of my community now, after taking taxis to her house, speaking to people and hearing their concerns and enabling solutions to be made. We could have put in more time into this story, approached more people, but our feelings of helplessness prevented us – after getting helped we felt more energised to tackle the problem. This highlighted for me the reason why so many people are apathetic and do not try to help themselves; it is because they have given up hope for change. If two middle-class educated students could lose hope during a short course, how much more could people who have lived with a leaking roof for two years give up hope?
We do feel that there needs to be more support from lecturers during this course, often we felt way out of our depth and in need of some psychological counselling after confronting the issues we did – other people in our group had to create pamphlets for prevention of sodomy, and the problems seemed to big to tackle in our own strength. We also felt frustrated because the potential of Haas’s public journalism are so great, yet in practice we felt we were selling ourselves short, not contributing enough time or effort or dedication to the cause due to demands from our other major, budget constraints and pure exhaustion from the end of term. But this course has opened our eyes to how journalism can be a real force for change within society, and restored our naïve first-year hopes to ‘change the world’ which had been systematically crushed by three years of media studies.
In this way, the course has impacted on our identities as journalists. We no longer see ourselves as aloof or apart from society, or unable to get involved due to objectivity concerns and non-bias; instead we are free to take initiative, expose inequalities and act on them. Merely covering the story as we would have before reading Haas’s public philosophy and discussing development, alternative and radical roles, would have resulted in a moving piece without any change. This is exploitative in nature, as Patricia would have opened her heart, her home and raised her hopes only to have nothing more come of it than our good marks and perhaps an emotional response from readers of Grocottt’s where it will appear as a photo essay. But now she will be uplifted, and through her, other residents will learn how to fix their own roofs, and stop waiting for the municipality to come to their aid because it might be a really long wait.
The only question left is how this kind of journalism can be sustainable as a potential career, but Grocott’s and the Daily Dispatch are leading the way in this kind of thinking.
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