Manley Flats Reflection

By Laura Watermeyer and Zinziswa Mani

We have produced an audio slideshow that aims to highlight scholar transport issues within the Manley Flats area, Grahamstown. The transport provided to children in the area is largely unreliable and poorly run. Our media product looks at the issue from the perspective of the principal of Manley Flats Primary School, as well as from the parents of the children affected and the children themselves. What follows is a discussion of this media product in terms of Haas’ public philosophy of public journalism as well as a critical evaluation of the production process.

Public journalism aims to promote a sense of civic commitment by re-evaluating the way in which we, as journalists, should engage with the public. Rather than seeing the public as passive consumers of the media that we produce, it encourages us to treat citizens as active participants; not providing information to consumers, but rather catalysing conversation amongst citizens. This understanding is aligned with Haas’s public philosophy for public journalism, in terms of which he attempts to produce democratically viable conceptions of the public. During the course of our journalistic processes and outputs we attempted to promote this understanding by addressing people as citizens and potential participants, rather than victims or mere consumers. When we approached the people within our ward, we encouraged them to speak freely about their issues and asked them to form a part of our final media production; in effect these people became the very substance of our media production and it was their opinions and concerns that informed our final product.

This was our intention at the outset and informed our objectives for our media product, namely to provide these people with a platform to address their issues and provide a voice for the voiceless. We think that these objectives have shown themselves to be realistic and measurable; however at the start of this process we were doubtful as to whether or not we would be able to take the issues of the community to a larger audience. This larger audience then formed the target audience to whom we wished to show our final media product; namely the Department of Education, who we understood to be in a position to facilitate change, and then other small businesses who we hoped may contribute toward the scholar transport problems within the Manley Flats area.

Haas suggests that journalists should create an open-ended public sphere to which all citizens have access and in which topics of concern can be openly articulated amongst the public, providing support for public discourse and deliberation. Due to the very rural location of our ward this posed an immediate challenge, particularly because we have chosen to work in a small farming community that is very detached from the mainstream media of Grahamstown. There has been little to no coverage of their particular area or of their concerns and as such we were faced with the challenge of trying to provide these citizens with a platform from which they could address and vocalize their issues and enable their opinions to be articulated amongst the public. It was very important to us that we could enable this very isolated and largely neglected community to become an active part of the public-sphere.

Haas’ approach is that journalists need to engage citizens as active participants in the news making process. This means that public journalists should share their authority with citizens by instituting various formal and informal means of involving citizens in the setting of news agendas; in effect listening to the public to help set a citizens news agenda. We made use of certain methods and techniques that we thought would be key in identifying problems of concern to local residents and that we thought would involve citizens in the setting of our news agenda. We involved citizens in in-depth interviews, for example we approached the principle of the local, rural school Manley Flats Primary School, and we encouraged him to talk freely about his concerns and thoughts. We also approached members of the community and conducted very informal meetings with them in their homes. We felt that this was the best way of allowing these people to talk freely and openly with us without feeling intimidated or uncertain of their views and opinions. Haas contends that journalists should rather see the public in terms of multiple social groups with different, and potentially conflicting, concerns. Thus, Haas contends that journalists should make every effort to keep the process of public deliberation as open and inclusive as possible, lessening the impact of social inequality and the difficulty of some citizens to participate on an equal footing. It is for this very reason, then, that we adopted this approach, we understood that a community of people who are very rural, and mostly only capable of speaking isiXhosa, would feel intimidated by a large community meeting where they may have felt that their issues were insignificant.

Haas puts forward a model that outlines the role ordinary citizens, experts, government officials and journalists should play in the problem solving process. He argues that while some problems may be potentially resolvable by citizens themselves, other problems may require active engagement and collaboration with experts and government officials.  Our issue was one that centered on scholar transport and the major issues that stem from scholar transport within a very rural area. This is an issue that affects the people within the area and unfortunately is not one that they can deal with themselves. They are forced to make use of the government provided scholar transport that is inconsistent and poorly run. As a direct result of this their children and those of neighbouring communities are forced to walk long distances to reach their place of education. Further, they often have to walk in poor weather conditions or are unable to go to school at all, limiting their access to education. This is an obvious problem that needs to be addressed by the government and by the Department of Education. Thus, the issue clearly required some active engagement and collaboration with the people in power. What we did find very rewarding was the fact that we could take our media product to the Department of Education and we received some very positive assistance and comment from the Managing Director. Although we still have to wait to see what actually comes from the follow up interviews, etc., it was still very positive to know that we were able to provide a platform to address an issue that is so often overlooked in the mainstream media. What was even better was that we were able to provide citizens, who are so often excluded and neglected in terms of their actual concerns and problems, with the opportunity to actively participate in the public sphere.

We think that we adopted a largely facilitative approach to how we participated with the communities and in the production of our media product.  However, this approach was coupled with advocacy journalism; an advocate journalist speaks or pleads on behalf of another, giving the other a face and a voice. Thus, we attempted to improve the quality of public life and add to democracy. We do feel as though the media we produced has enhanced the process of development and democracy within Grahamstown. The people within this community have been largely overlooked by Grahamstown’s mainstream media and this obviously has dire effects on their involvement and consciousness of democratic processes. By bringing their concerns to public attention and actively making people aware of their issues we are also actively involving them in democratic process and making them a component of the public sphere. We have achieved this by making their concerns visible to a much larger community of people, via Grocott’s Mail and Grocott’s Mail Online for example. In effect, we have attempted to put a previously overlooked community of people in contact with civil society.

The ideas that were raised in our JDD and CMP class have impacted immensely on our identities as young professional journalists. It made us realise that we shouldn’t always push our own news agenda or the agenda that is imposed upon us by mainstream media organisations. Rather, we should actively try to let people tell their stories the way they want and give them a voice. It made us realise that sometimes we can’t always be objective when reporting on other people’s lives; sometimes elements of subjectivity can bring much needed dimension to a story, provided that the depiction is accurate. This course made us realise that we shouldn’t always cover stories in our own way; we should cover stories in a way that enables citizens to reflect on their different, potentially conflicting, concerns and interests.  Rather than simply slipping into a monotorial role of journalism, where we serve to observe and report on the operation of the state, we were forced to think outside the box. For the first time our perceptions of “good old-fashioned journalism” were challenged and found wanting.

It no longer seems good enough to sit on the sidelines and conduct impartial, objective interviews. Rather, there is a desire to search for a story and tell it in a way that will facilitate change. We realise the need of actively bringing much needed attention to those sectors of our community that need our help in telling their story and surely this is our purpose as journalists who are challenged with the role of advancing democracy and development?