Pity the journalists who are flogging themselves in an orgy of self-immolation over the death of a kindergarten teacher who failed high school
August 31, 1997. Diana, Princess of Wales, meets an untimely nasty death when a legally drunk chauffeur attempts to ascertain what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object.
As the world once again looked for a scapegoat in the media, journalist Kaizer Nyatsumba writing in The Mercury took the extraordinary step of admitting guilt on behalf of the entire journalistic community.
“Every journalist, every photographer, and every editor around the world has blood on his or her hands today,” Nyatsumba wrote.
“All of us in the media — who have remained silent while people's privacy and other rights have been flagrantly violated by some louts in our midst — have blood on our hands today . . . I, for one, have never been more ashamed of being a journalist,” he added.
Unfortunately, his self-confessed complicity did not move his conscience sufficiently to persuade him to resign from this accursed profession.
More's the pity, because it is precisely this sort of ill-informed emotional garbage that continues to fuel the fires of those who seek to control public access to information.
Nyatsumba believes that newspaper circulations are plummeting, suggesting the reading public has grown disillusioned with a press which "appears interested only in muck-raking".
My own considered opinion is that newspapers — including The Mercury — will record their highest sales of the year as a result of Diana's death. I also predict that those journals which are able to provide the most exclusive information will record the highest growth in circulation.
The man who walks a tightrope without a safety net always draws bigger crowds. The crowds don't necessarily want him to fall. But they are curious as to what would happen if he did.
Somewhere down the line, the House of Windsor set up a propaganda exercise to create a modern fairytale. Public offerings in the form of coffee-table books from Lord Snowdon or the sycophantic drivel of exclusive photographic interviews with Hello! magazine fired public appetites.
But the fairytale turned to nightmare, and the safety net of royal-friendly publications was replaced by the yawning chasm of scandal sheets.
The tightrope walkers stumbled, tripped, and the public watched with increasing fascination. Demand for stories and pictures detailing the stumbling and falling pushed up the price.
No newspapers, magazine, or television station is capable of generating the sort of income from a cover price or licence fee that enables them to pay $200 000 (R970 000)1 for a photograph.
Advertisers provide that sort of money. And they put their money into publications who provide the largest number of eyes. No advertiser has dissociated itself from any publication in protest against paparazzi tactics because it sells their products.
A buck feeds on grass. A lion feeds on the buck. The lion dies and fertilises the grass. There is no evil in this cycle.
But working within this cycle are journalists of conscience who, amid the greater noise of mass demand for frivolous information, continue to serve as watchdogs of society. They need offer no apology.
Diana's death is a tragedy — the tragedy of a girl who failed her "O" levels but was still groomed by the Windsors to be an icon of ideal womanhood; a tightrope walker without a safety net. Who's to blame?
You've read this, haven't you?
- 1. Yes, the rand was R4,85 to the US dollar back then.