Carolyn Hamilton

Thinking aloud/allowed: pursuing the public interest in radio debate

This article examines the controversy that erupted in 2006 when the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was accused of banning certain commentators. The ‘blacklisting’ saga surfaced differences in ideas and practices of publicness among the contenders in the controversy and revealed that notions of the public, public accountability and the public interest were contested. The research describes independent newsroom practices conducted in terms of journalistic ethics and professional ideologies, and shows that journalists assume a powerful role in defining publics and calling them into being, as well as in orchestrating their participation in public deliberation. This is a professional responsibility that is recognised and defended. However, the practices associated with that responsibility and the power to orchestrate the debate in particular ways are not critically engaged within the profession. Just as the debate illuminates the concept of publicness imported into journalistic practice, it also illuminates concepts imported into SABC institutional practice which are rooted in a long lineage of national democratic struggle. In the controversy, the two concepts chafed against each other, propounded in each case by protagonists embedded in their respective lineages. The controversy was thus more than simply a struggle for political control; it was a contest about the meaning of democratic citizenship itself, rooted in differing but intersecting political‐intellectual logics.

Producing media debate: journalistic practice and public discussion

Abstract This article examines journalistic practice in relation to the production of debate in the media. By way of examples drawn from South African journalism, we show that the production of opinion, analysis and debate entails a different set of processes from the practices employed in news production. Editors and senior journalists understand the facilitation of debate as an important media responsibility, and intervene in the dynamics of debate in order to ensure that the debate meets their ideals of reasoned discussion. We name this conducting of the process ‘orchestration’, and we argue that the shape that debate takes in the media depends on its ‘orchestration’. In particular, for debate to approximate in any way the Enlightenment ideal of informed and measured discussion between citizens on issues of the common good, a high degree of orchestration is needed. Thus the ‘impartial’ model employed for reporting news, where various opposing protagonists are given voice and the ‘right to reply’, cannot simply be transposed to opinion and analysis sections without introducing certain potentially problematic features into public debate. Given the importance of the medias role in public discussion, and the complexities of production, this article argues that it is crucial for journalists to make explicit the processes involved in the production of opinion, to examine their practice critically, and to consider the implications for public discussion.