Much of the media discourse over the last few weeks laid bare the ideological fault lines on which South Africa’s online media ecosystem precariously situated. Implicit in some of the arguments from liberal media and their commentariat is that certain publications are immutably untrustworthy, while others are of unimpeachable quintessence.
This kind of tribalism is to be expected of football fans, not media commentators.
The fundament of the South African liberal online media, who it serves, how information flows through the veins and arteries of the post-newspaper information stream, and its proximity to Western interests is undeniable.
There is an instinctive reflex of the commentariat to reinforce and amplify this consensus. They extend limitless grace for some egregious ethical lapses by liberal publications. They crane their necks to overlook the proximity of these media interests to ideological, commercial, and in some cases, foreign interests.
The pearl clutching, the faux-outrage, the low down dirty personal attacks by some journalists on their contemporaries hides the fact that their institutions created the playbook for what they now object to. It’s time to be honest about the media swamp that used to be a watering hole, muddied by liberal yellow journalism that seeks to trammel South Africa into a geopolitical zugzwang.
So let's drop some files, and drop some names, and drop the façade that some self appointed high priests of the South African media ecosystem should be allowed to operate in a vacuum of accountability and disclosure that they demand of others.
The Anton Harber fatwa
If you’re only here to read about the public unmasking by a news publication of an anonymous person, I’ll deal with that a bit further down the line, In the meantime, you can prove the point I made three paragraphs ago and click on something more your speed, like the Daily Friend, or the moron olympics that is the comments section of the Daily Maverick. For the most part, this series is about how the boerewors of consensus is made, and whose hands are on the levers of control. Your favourite media brand sometimes serves you liberal horsemeat and asks you to believe that it’s sirloin.
I’ve written extensively on funding and influence networks in the South African media. In the formative years of this research, there were very public interventions made by highly respected authorities in the South African mediascape to discredit this.
There are individuals and institutions who have accrued the authority to be able to dictate what is acceptable discourse, and what isn’t. These actors are so divorced from the reality of how real people consume media, as if they descend from on high carrying their stone tablets of what thou shalt and what thou shalt not according to their own agendas, sensibilities, preferences, prejudices and biases.
Meet the OG Moses of South African media, Anton Harber.
“Mainstream media need to think twice when following the ‘facts’,” guffawed SA liberal media’s dad, Anton Harber in a BDLive column. He has come out to sweep on behalf of his media friends and collaborators in response to my investigative articles that held publications to a public interest standard of disclosure. He then teamed up with his good friend Dennis Davis against me, where the crux of his argument was: “I asked my friends whether they were above board, and they said yes.” Judge for Yourself whether “trust me bro” is an acceptable standard of refutation.
Judge for Yourself whether “trust me bro” is an acceptable standard of refutation.
Regardless, the Anton Harber fatwa is a powerful one. So powerful that the then-editor of BDLive did not give me a right of reply, muttering something about “no space” (in the unlimited space zone that is a digital platform, a sorry and cowardly excuse for obsequiousness to the shitlib cause). Freedom of expression for Harber and co, no space for others.
Harber’s BDLive piece labelled my research and output as taking a “Trumpian approach: ignore the facts, repeat the lies and insult everyone in sight”. Nothing could be further from the truth, and if anything I have written then or subsequently falls short of a standard of veracity, these people and institutions have a variety of forums in which they can seek relief. To date none of them have.
I wrote subsequent investigative pieces, addressing some very pertinent disclosures in South African media. Key among those many revelations were:
- The proximity to the National Endowment for Democracy of key South African publications and the revolving door between those media houses to US State department institutions;
- The revolving door between his beloved Mail & Guardian and US-state department institutions;
- The pernicious influence of the Oppenheimer family in the media/political ecosystem;
- The Daily Maverick’s deep connection to US and Nato military think tanks and its personnel; and
- Naspers’ political donations to the Grand Coalition of the ANC and the DA.
Harber’s silence, and that of his associates, was instructive. No media appearances or columns, just the silence of a white liberal fatwa. The Ayatollah Anton has conferred upon himself the right to determine what is a conspiracy theory, and what isn’t, all the while indulging in his own conspiracy theories.
After a presidential commission of inquiry determined that we did not in fact sell arms to Russia, Harber continued to fuel doubt as to the veracity of that report. It is his right to do so, but it just makes him look a bit stupid. Or, if we are generous, he is lazy.
It’s actual hard work and research to understand the NCACC, how it works, the checks and balances that we have in how we sell arms, how the determination is made as to who we sell arms to and so forth. It’s easier to allude to some kind of wrong doing or non disclosure on the part of the government than to acknowledge that South Africa’s liberal online media (of which, as I mentioned before, Anton Harber is the biological father of), was sold the world’s biggest dummy by the US Ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety III.
Suddenly, the standard of proof of asking your friends in the media, most of whom are white liberals, looks like worst practice.
Since the Harber fatwa against me, and in fact to de-credentialise any similar research, there has been an indisputable recording of the facts that I laid out as far the influence of Western propaganda in our media, and the scaffolding of institutional authority by certain media players. While there is an acknowledgement that this influence exists, the extent of it is perhaps the real reason why Harber and his ilk, the self-appointed and self-serving liberal apostles of our mediascape, look to quash an honest debate about the lay of the land. It would kill the credibility of institutions whose credibility is already precarious as the mediascape experiences market failure.
I understand perfectly well why these actors are compelled to come out and defend with a high line and press on every front. They have to deny, justify and minimise the effect, or even the existence of US and Nato-aligned institutions’ influence over our mediascape.
Liberal actors, particularly the proxies of US influence, direct their attention and energy to countering the influence, real and perceived, of geopolitical opponents of Western unipolarity here in South Africa. One of the theatres of this ideological struggle is the South African National Editors Forum, a professional forum that is mainly a cheese and whine club for media libs.
Next up SANEF: The liberal cheese and whine club
* Roscoe Palm is an investigative journalist and a political commentator.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Media or IOL.