The state of South African media: a space to contest democracy

Abstract

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.