Profit Motive vs Public Interest - Mandla Magidela

Profit Motive vs Public Interest

The media has a tendency of masking shareholder and profit interest as public interest. More often than not, the public interest card is played whenever an opportunity to generate massive revenue and high profit margins presents itself. A mere top-of-the-head analysis will show you that all cases and issues said to be of public interest will involve either someone or a grouping from high society cliques, well known politician, artist, professional or a sports personality. You will hardly, if ever hear the media houses approaching courts for access to court cases that involve less known individuals unless it suits their public relations efforts.

The Oscar Pistorius circus is just one example. Public interest in the matter was manufactured and whipped up in everybody's face.

When Ayanda and Voox terrorised the communities of Khayelitsha and Gugulethu respectively, they never featured in main stream papers. You would only read about them from Vukani and City Vision. Ayanda alone, excluding his gang, had more than a dozen brutal murders attributed to his name. Albany, Blue Ribbon and Dunes bakeries tremble when they hear the name of Ayanda. They lost tens of thousands to his bakery hijackings. They have to beef up security and hire escort vehicles.

Motorists and women of Nyanga/Phillippi and Gugs get cold when you mention Voox. Execution style murders were common in hijackings and it was Voox's signature. But because the motive of profit dictates what you must read and what you must think about, these stories never made national news.

The people of Khayelitsha and Gugulethu combined do not have a financial muscle that would generate the same amount of revenue for media houses that equals what is being contributed by the affluent communities of Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp. That partly explains why the media was so much interested in this matter. Of course not because of public interest as they claimed, but as a matter of profit motive and the inherent desire to impress the shareholders.

Coverage of gender based violence cases spirals during the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence and during the Month of August which has been dubbed  the Women’s Month. This is particularly so because the majority of these cases occur in poorer communities where public interest does not generate enough revenue for media organisations. For black people living in these townships, brutal violence is a daily reality and a serious matter of public interest. But the media would not care less because their profit motive cannot be served by such news.

For the majority of black people in this country, the Oscar Pistorius circus is a welcomed relief as form of television entertainment, not necessarily a matter that will encourage dialogue and debate in their midst. South African media is currently pre occupied with jobs promises by political parties in the coming general election. There is absolutely nothing on papers about black poverty and how the election result will be determined by this phenomenon. They would not write about the daily experiences of black poverty because it will not generate the much needed profit.