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=Tell us the truth or shut up!=

The Star, Johannesburg, Letters, March 21, 2006
Now that Helen Zille has been appointed mayor of Cape Town by a narrow margin, we can perhaps move forward and look into serious issues pertaining to the role of the media in a post-apartheid society.

In fact, the runaway success of the ANC in the local government elections raises a question which turns the spot- light on the "unguarded guardians of society", as to why anyone should take the commentary and predictions of journalists and their hand-picked "experts" seriously?

What is their agenda regarding the ruling party? It is a question that has haunted the media ever since the black majority government took over in 1994, with former President Nelson Mandela as the first democratically elected leader of this divided nation.

A close study of the media's national and local election coverage over the past 12 years, has taught us that the rambling analyses and insight pieces of most journalists in the so-called privately owned media, are a thumbsuck.

For months, some senior journalists and their colleagues have devoted time and energy to showing cracks in the tripartite alliance, how the ANC is falling apart, the disillusionment of the masses and that nobody was going to turn up to vote.

The view that the ANC has defied predictions to sweep the local poll for instance, has elevated these commentators to a delusional pedestal that makes them political prophets, who can foresee the future simply because of being in a position to express their opinions.

But none of their prognoses have come to pass. Despite rumbles of discontent by the communists in Khutsong, the tripartite alliance is intact.

Despite the Jacob Zuma crisis, the ANC is solid and united. Despite the explosion of violence at grassroots, the common folk came out to vote.

So, please, this agenda to portray the country as a place out of sync with reality, must end. And the sooner the better, because it is becoming increasingly intolerable for sophisticated readers to be misled by journalists and commentators out of touch with the developments and trends in this country.

Yes, we critical readers are not prepared to accept presumptuous rigmaroles which are presented as fact.

Obviously, there is a lack of communication between the journalists, "expert" commentators and the masses, because the media is not telling us what we are experiencing.

The problem is made worse, not only by the laziness of so-called research houses, with their prejudiced questions and foregone conclusions, but their surveyors are also interviewing the poor and hungry in English and not in their mother tongue.

In fact, the media has got to stop its cowardice and take decisive steps to not only solve the problem of juniorisation in the newsroom, but to give us commentary from people intuitively connected to developments at grassroots.

The opinions of these journalists and their selected experts, justify their reasons for pandering to the whims of advertisers and marketers.

These paying masters, who are the media's lifeline, do not want to read about racism, monopoly of land and economic injustice, because it would disturb their conscience.

Many so-called professional commentators continue to overlook the major problems in our country, by focusing on what they perceive to be a crisis in the tripartite alliance, the ANC and the so-called voter apathy.

Unfortunately, it reveals cracks in the edifice of the "unguarded guardians of society" which makes critical readers lose faith in the credibility of the mainstream media.

I appeal to our journalists and their hand-picked "experts", to tell us the truth which matches our reality, or to shut up!

Vorna Valley, Midrand
 * Sandile Memela**


 * From: http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=228&fArticleId=3167111